Throughout 2005 and 2006, a large underground debate raged
regarding the future of the Internet. More recently referred to
as ânetwork neutrality,â the issue has become a tug of war with
cable companies on the one hand and consumers and Internet
service providers on the other. Yet despite important
legislative proposals and Supreme Court decisions throughout
2005, the issue was almost completely ignored in the headlines
until 2006.1 And, except for occasional coverage on CNBCâs
Kudlow & Kramer, mainstream television remains hands-off to this
day (June 2006).2
Most coverage of the issue framed it as an argument over
regulationâbut the term âregulationâ in this case is somewhat
misleading. Groups advocating for ânet neutralityâ are not
promoting regulation of internet content. What they want is a
legal mandate forcing cable companies to allow internet service
providers (ISPs) free access to their cable lines (called a
âcommon carriageâ agreement). This was the model used for
dial-up internet, and it is the way content providers want to
keep it. They also want to make sure that cable companies cannot
screen or interrupt internet content without a court order.

Those in favor of net neutrality say that lack of government
regulation simply means that cable lines will be regulated by
the cable companies themselves. ISPs will have to pay a hefty
service fee for the right to use cable lines (making internet
services more expensive). Those who could pay more would get
better access; those who could not pay would be left behind.
Cable companies could also decide to filter Internet content at
will.

On the other side, cable company supporters say that a great
deal of time and money was spent laying cable lines and
expanding their speed and quality.3 They claim that allowing
ISPs free access would deny cable companies the ability to
recoup their investments, and maintain that cable providers
should be allowed to charge. Not doing so, they predict, would
discourage competition and innovation within the cable industry.

Cable supporters like the AT&T-sponsored Hands Off the
Internet website assert that common carriage legislation would
lead to higher prices and months of legal wrangling. They
maintain that such legislation fixes a problem that doesnât
exist and scoff at concerns that phone and cable companies will
use their position to limit access based on fees as groundless.
Though cable companies deny plans to block content providers
without cause, there are a number of examples of cable-initiated
discrimination.

In March 2005, the FCC settled a case against a North
Carolina-based telephone company that was blocking the ability
of its customers to use voice-over-Internet calling services
instead of (the more expensive) phone lines.4 In August 2005, a
Canadian cable company blocked access to a site that supported
the cable union in a labor dispute.5 In February 2006, Cox
Communications denied customers access to the Craigâs List
website. Though Cox claims that it was simply a security error,
it was discovered that Cox ran a classified service that
competes with Craigâs List.6
court decisions

In June of 1999, the Ninth District Court ruled that AT&T
would have to open its cable network to ISPs (AT&T v. City of
Portland). The court said that Internet transmissions,
interactive, two-way exchanges, were telecommunication
offerings, not a cable information service (like CNN) that sends
data one way. This decision was overturned on appeal a year
later.

Recent court decisions have extended the cable company agenda
further. On June 27, 2005, The United States Supreme Court ruled
that cable corporations like Comcast and Verizon were not
required to share their lines with rival ISPs (National Cable &
Telecommunications Association vs. Brand X Internet Services).7
Cable companies would not have to offer common carriage
agreements for cable lines the way that telephone companies have
for phone lines.
According to Dr. Elliot Cohen, the decision accepted the FCC
assertion that cable modem service is not a two-way
telecommunications offering, but a one-way information service,
completely overturning the 1999 ruling. Meanwhile, telephone
companies charge that such a decision gives an unfair advantage
to cable companies and are requesting that they be released from
their common carriage requirement as well.

Legislation
On June 8, the House rejected legislation (HR 5273) that would
have prevented phone and cable companies from selling
preferential treatment on their networks for delivery of video
and other data-heavy applications. It also passed the
Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement (COPE)
Act (HR 5252), which supporters said would encourage innovation
and the construction of more high-speed Internet lines. Internet
neutrality advocates say it will allow phone and cable companies
to cherry-pick customers in wealthy neighborhoods while
eliminating the current requirement demanded by most local
governments that cable TV companies serve low-income and
minority areas as well. 8

Comment: As of June 2006, the COPE Act is in the Senate.
Supporters say the bill supports innovation and freedom of
choice. Interet neutrality advocates say that its passage would
forever compromise the Internet. Giant cable companies would
attain a monopoly on high-speed, cable Internet. They would
prevent poorer citizens from broadband access, while monitoring
and controlling the content of information that can be accessed.

UPDATE BY ELLIOT D. COHEN, PH.D.
Despite the fact that the Courtâs decision in Brand X marks the
beginning of the end for a robust, democratic Internet, there
has been a virtual MSM blackout in covering it. As a result of
this decision, the legal stage has been set for further
corporate control. Currently pending in Congress is the
âCommunications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of
2006â(HR 5252), fueled by strong telecom corporative lobbies and
introduced by Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX). This Act, which
fails to adequately protect an open and neutral Internet,
includes a âTitle IIâEnforcement of Broadband Policy Statementâ
that gives the FCC âexclusive authority to adjudicate any
complaint alleging a violation of the broadband policy statement
or the principles incorporated therein.â With the passage of
this provision, courts will have scant authority to challenge
and overturn FCC decisions regarding broadband. Since under
current FCC Chair Kevin Martin, the FCC is moving toward still
further deregulation of telecom and media companies, the likely
consequence is the thickening of the plot to increase corporate
control of the Internet. In particular, behemoth telecom
corporations like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T want to set up toll
booths on the Internet. If these companies get their way,
content providers with deep pockets will be afforded optimum
bandwidth while the rest of us will be left spinning in
cyberspace. No longer will everyone enjoy an equal voice in the
freest and most comprehensive democratic forum ever devised by
humankind.

As might be expected, none of these new developments are
being addressed by the MSM. Among media activist organizations
attempting to stop the gutting of the free Internet is The Free
Press (http://www.freepress.net/),
which now has an aggressive âSave the Internetâ campaign.

According to journalist Jason Leopold, sources at former
Cheney company Halliburton allege that, as recently as January
of 2005, Halliburton sold key components for a nuclear reactor
to an Iranian oil development company. Leopold says his
Halliburton sources have intimate knowledge of the business
dealings of both Halliburton and Oriental Oil Kish, one of
Iranâs largest private oil companies.

Additionally, throughout 2004 and 2005, Halliburton worked
closely with Cyrus Nasseri, the vice chairman of the board of
directors of Iran-based Oriental Oil Kish, to develop oil
projects in Iran. Nasseri is also a key member of Iranâs nuclear
development team. Nasseri was interrogated by Iranian
authorities in late July 2005 for allegedly providing
Halliburton with Iranâs nuclear secrets. Iranian government
officials charged Nasseri with accepting as much as $1 million
in bribes from Halliburton for this information.

Oriental Oil Kish dealings with Halliburton first became
public knowledge in January 2005 when the company announced that
it had subcontracted parts of the South Pars gas-drilling
project to Halliburton Products and Services, a subsidiary of
Dallas-based Halliburton that is registered to the Cayman
Islands. Following the announcement, Halliburton claimed that
the South Pars gas field project in Tehran would be its last
project in Iran. According to a BBC report, Halliburton, which
took thirty to forty million dollars from its Iranian operations
in 2003, âwas winding down its work due to a poor business
environment.â

However, Halliburton has a long history of doing business in
Iran, starting as early as 1995, while Vice President Cheney was
chief executive of the company. Leopold quotes a February 2001
report published in the Wall Street Journal, âHalliburton
Products and Services Ltd., works behind an unmarked door on the
ninth floor of a new north Tehran tower block. A brochure
declares that the company was registered in 1975 in the Cayman
Islands, is based in the Persian Gulf sheikdom of Dubai and is
ânon-American.â But like the sign over the receptionistâs head,
the brochure bears the companyâs name and red emblem, and offers
services from Halliburton units around the world.â Moreover mail
sent to the companyâs offices in Tehran and the Cayman Islands
is forwarded directly to its Dallas headquarters.

In an attempt to curtail Halliburton and other U.S. companies
from engaging in business dealings with rogue nations such as
Libya, Iran, and Syria, an amendment was approved in the Senate
on July 26, 2005. The amendment, sponsored by Senator Susan
Collins R-Maine, would penalize companies that continue to skirt
U.S. law by setting up offshore subsidiaries as a way to legally
conduct and avoid U.S. sanctions under the International
Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

A letter, drafted by trade groups representing corporate
executives, vehemently objected to the amendment, saying it
would lead to further hatred and perhaps incite terrorist
attacks on the U.S. and âgreatly strain relations with the
United States primary trading partners.â The letter warned that,
âForeign governments view U.S. efforts to dictate their foreign
and commercial policy as violations of sovereignty often leading
them to adopt retaliatory measures more at odds with U.S.
goals.â

Collins supports the legislation, stating, âIt prevents U.S.
corporations from creating a shell company somewhere else in
order to do business with rogue, terror-sponsoring nations such
as Syria and Iran. The bottom line is that if a U.S. company is
evading sanctions to do business with one of these countries,
they are helping to prop up countries that support
terrorismâmost often aimed against America.

UPDATE BY JASON LEOPOLD
During a trip to the Middle East in March 1996, Vice President
Dick Cheney told a group of mostly U.S. businessmen that
Congress should ease sanctions in Iran and Libya to foster
better relationships, a statement that, in hindsight, is
completely hypocritical considering the Bush administrationâs
foreign policy.

âLet me make a generalized statement about a trend I see in
the U.S. Congress that I find disturbing, that applies not only
with respect to the Iranian situation but a number of others as
well,â Cheney said. âI think we Americans sometimes make
mistakes . . . There seems to be an assumption that somehow we
know whatâs best for everybody else and that we are going to use
our economic clout to get everybody else to live the way we
would like.â

Cheney was the chief executive of Halliburton Corporation at
the time he uttered those words. It was Cheney who directed
Halliburton toward aggressive business dealings with Iranâin
violation of U.S. lawâin the mid-1990s, which continued through
2005 and is the reason Iran has the capability to enrich
weapons-grade uranium.
It was Halliburtonâs secret sale of centrifuges to Iran that
helped get the uranium enrichment program off the ground,
according to a three-year investigation that includes interviews
conducted with more than a dozen current and former Halliburton
employees.

If the U.S. ends up engaged in a war with Iran in the future,
Cheney and Halliburton will bear the brunt of the blame.
But this shouldnât come as a shock to anyone who has been
following Halliburtonâs business activities over the past
decade. The company has a long, documented history of violating
U.S. sanctions and conducting business with so-called rogue
nations.

No, whatâs disturbing about these facts is how little
attention it has received from the mainstream media. But the
public record speaks for itself, as do the thousands of pages of
documents obtained by various federal agencies that show how
Halliburtonâs business dealings in Iran helped fund terrorist
activities thereâincluding the countryâs nuclear enrichment
program.

When I asked Wendy Hall, a spokeswoman for Halliburton, a
couple of years ago if Halliburton would stop doing business
with Iran because of concerns that the company helped fund
terrorism she said, âNo.â âWe believe that decisions as to the
nature of such governments and their actions are better made by
governmental authorities and international entities such as the
United Nations as opposed to individual persons or companies,â
Hall said. âPutting politics aside, we and our affiliates
operate in countries to the extent it is legally permissible,
where our customers are active as they expect us to provide
oilfield services support to their international operations. âWe
do not always agree with policies or actions of governments in
every place that we do business and make no excuses for their
behaviors. Due to the long-term nature of our business and the
inevitability of political and social change, it is neither
prudent nor appropriate for our company to establish our own
country-by-country foreign policy.â

Halliburton first started doing business in Iran as early as
1995, while Vice President Cheney was chief executive of the
company and in possible violation of U.S. sanctions.

An executive order signed by former President Bill Clinton in
March 1995 prohibits ânew investments (in Iran) by U.S. persons,
including commitment of funds or other assets.â It also bars
U.S. companies from performing services âthat would benefit the
Iranian oil industryâ and provide Iran with the financial means
to engage in terrorist activity.
When Bush and Cheney came into office in 2001, their
administration decided it would not punish foreign oil and gas
companies that invest in those countries. The sanctions imposed
on countries like Iran and Libya before Bush became president
were blasted by Cheney, who gave frequent speeches on the need
for U.S. companies to compete with their foreign competitors,
despite claims that those countries may have ties to terrorism.

âI think weâd be better off if we, in fact, backed off those
sanctions (on Iran), didnât try to impose secondary boycotts on
companies . . . trying to do business over there . . . and
instead started to rebuild those relationships,â Cheney said
during a 1998 business trip to Sydney, Australia, according to
Australiaâs Illawarra Mercury newspaper.

#3 Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger

Oceanic problems once found on a local scale are now
pandemic. Data from oceanography, marine biology, meteorology,
fishery science, and glaciology reveal that the seas are
changing in ominous ways. A vortex of cause and effect wrought
by global environmental dilemmas is changing the ocean from a
watery horizon with assorted regional troubles to a global
system in alarming distress.

According to oceanographers the oceans are one, with currents
linking the seas and regulating climate. Sea temperature and
chemistry changes, along with contamination and reckless fishing
practices, intertwine to imperil the worldâs largest communal
life source.

In 2005, researchers from the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
found clear evidence the ocean is quickly warming. They
discovered that the top half-mile of the ocean has warmed
dramatically in the past forty years as a result of
human-induced greenhouse gases.

One manifestation of this warming is the melting of the
Arctic. A shrinking ratio of ice to water has set off a feedback
loop, accelerating the increase in water surfaces that promote
further warming and melting. With polar waters growing fresher
and tropical seas saltier, the cycle of evaporation and
precipitation has quickened, further invigorating the greenhouse
effect. The oceanâs currents are reacting to this freshening,
causing a critical conveyor that carries warm upper waters into
Europeâs northern latitudes to slow by one third since 1957,
bolstering fears of a shut down and cataclysmic climate change.
This accelerating cycle of cause and effect will be difficult,
if not impossible, to reverse.
Atmospheric litter is also altering sea chemistry, as thousands
of toxic compounds poison marine creatures and devastate
propagation. The ocean has absorbed an estimated 118 billion
metric tons of carbon dioxide since the onset of the Industrial
Revolution, with 20 to 25 tons being added to the atmosphere
daily. Increasing acidity from rising levels of CO2 is changing
the oceanâs PH balance. Studies indicate that the shells and
skeletons possessed by everything from reef-building corals to
mollusks and plankton begin to dissolve within forty-eight hours
of exposure to the acidity expected in the ocean by 2050. Coral
reefs will almost certainly disappear and, even more worrisome,
so will plankton. Phytoplankton absorb greenhouse gases,
manufacture oxygen, and are the primary producers of the marine
food web.
Mercury pollution enters the food web via coal and chemical
industry waste, oxidizes in the atmosphere, and settles to the
sea bottom. There it is consumed, delivering mercury to each
subsequent link in the food chain, until predators such as tuna
or whales carry levels of mercury as much as one million times
that of the waters around them. The Gulf of Mexico has the
highest mercury levels ever recorded, with an average of ten
tons of mercury coming down the Mississippi River every year,
and another ton added by offshore drilling.

Along with mercury, the Mississippi delivers nitrogen (often
from fertilizers). Nitrogen stimulates plant and bacterial
growth in the water that consume oxygen, creating a condition
known as hypoxia, or dead zones. Dead zones occur wherever
oceanic oxygen is depleted below the level necessary to sustain
marine life. A sizable portion of the Gulf of Mexico has become
a dead zoneâthe largest such area in the U.S. and the second
largest on the planet, measuring nearly 8,000 square miles in
2001. It is no coincidence that almost all of the nearly 150
(and counting) dead zones on earth lay at the mouths of rivers.
Nearly fifty fester off U.S. coasts. While most are caused by
river-borne nitrogen, fossil fuel-burning plants help create
this condition, as does phosphorous from human sewage and
nitrogen emissions from auto exhaust.

Meanwhile, since its peak in 2000, the global wild fish
harvest has begun a sharp decline despite progress in seagoing
technologies and intensified fishing. So-called efficiencies in
fishing have stimulated unprecedented decimation of sealife.
Long-lining, in which a single boat sets line across sixty or
more miles of ocean, each baited with up to 10,000 hooks,
captures at least 25 percent unwanted catch. With an estimated 2
billion hooks set each year, as much as 88 billion pounds of
life a year is thrown back to the ocean either dead or dying.
Additionally, trawlers drag nets across every square inch of the
continental shelves every two years. Fishing the sea floor like
a bulldozer, they level an area 150 times larger than all forest
clearcuts each year and destroy seafloor ecosystems. Aquaculture
is no better, since three pounds of wild fish are caught to feed
every pound of farmed salmon. A 2003 study out of Dalhousie
University in Nova Scotia concluded, based on data dating from
the 1950s, that in the wake of decades of such onslaught only 10
percent of all large fish (tuna, swordfish) and ground fish
(cod, hake, flounder) are left anywhere in the ocean.

Other sea nurseries are also threatened. Fifteen percent of
seagrass beds have disappeared in the last ten years, depriving
juvenile fish, manatees, and sea turtles of critical habitats.
Kelp beds are also dying at alarming rates.

While at no time in history has science taught more about how
the earthâs life-support systems work, the maelstrom of human
assault on the seas continues. If human failure in governance of
the worldâs largest public domain is not reversed quickly, the
ocean will soon and surely reach a point of no return.

Comment:
After release of the Pew Oceans Commission report, U.S. media,
most notably The Washington Post and National Public Radio in
2003 and 2004, covered several stories regarding impending
threats to the ocean, recommendations for protection, and
President Bushâs response. However, media treatment of the
collective acceleration of ocean damage and cross-pollination of
harm was left to Julia Whitty in her lengthy feature. In April
of 2006, Time Magazine presented an in-depth article about earth
at âthe tipping point,â describing the planet as an overworked
organism fighting the consequences of global climate change on
shore and sea. In her Mother Jones article, Whitty presented a
look at global illness by directly examining the ocean as
earthâs circulatory, respiratory, and reproductive system.

Following up on âThe Last Days of the Ocean,â Mother Jones
has produced âOcean Voyager,â an innovative web-based adventure
that includes videos, audio interviews with key players,
webcams, and links to informative web pages created by more than
twenty organizations. The site is a tour of various ocean
trouble spots around the world, which highlights solutions and
suggests actions that can be taken to help make a difference.

UPDATE BY JULIA WHITTY
This story is awash with new developments. Scientists are
currently publishing at an unprecedented rate their
observationsânot just predictionsâon the rapid changes underway
on our ocean planet. First and foremost, the year 2005 turned
out to be the warmest year on record. This reinforces other data
showing the earth has grown hotter in the past 400 years, and
possibly in the past 2,000 years. A study out of the National
Center for Atmospheric Research found ocean temperatures in the
tropical North Atlantic in 2005 nearly two degrees Fahrenheit
above normal; this turned out to be the predominant catalyst for
the monstrous 2005 hurricane seasonâthe most violent season ever
seen.

The news from the polar ice is no better. A joint
NASA/University of Kansas study in Science (02/06) reveals that
Greenlandâs glaciers are surging towards the sea and melting
more than twice as fast as ten years ago. This further endangers
the critical balance of the North Atlantic meridional
overturning circulation, which holds our climate stable.
Meanwhile, in March, the British Antarctic Survey announced
their findings that the âglobal warming signatureâ of the
Antarctic is three times larger than what weâre seeing elsewhere
on Earthâthe first proof of broadscale climate change across the
southern continent.

Since âThe Fate of the Oceanâ went to press in Mother Jones
magazine, evidence of the politicization of science in the
global climate wars has also emerged. In January 2006 NASAâs top
climate scientist, James Hansen, accused the agency of trying to
censor his work. Four months later, Hansenâs accusations were
echoed by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, as well as by a U.S. Geological Survey scientist
working at a NOAA lab, who claimed their work on global climate
change was being censored by their departments, as part of a
policy of intimidation by the anti-science Bush administration.

Problems for the oceanâs wildlife are escalating too. In
2005, biologists from the U.S. Minerals Management Service found
polar bears drowned in the waters off Alaska, apparent victims
of the disappearing ice. In 2006, U.S. Geological Survey Alaska
Science Center researchers found polar bears killing and eating
each other in areas where sea ice failed to form that year,
leaving the bears bereft of food. In response, the International
Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources
revised their Red List for polar bearsâupgrading them from
âconservation dependentâ to âvulnerable.â In February, the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would begin reviewing
whether polar bears need protection under the Endangered Species
Act.

Since my report, the leaders of two influential
commissionsâthe Pew Oceans Commission and the U.S. Commission on
Ocean Policyâgave Congress, the Bush administration, and our
nationâs governors a âD+â grade for not moving quickly enough to
address their recommendations for restoring health to our
nationâs oceans.

Most of these stories remain out of view, sunk with cement
boots in the backwaters of scientific journals. The media
remains unable to discern good science from bad, and gives equal
credence to both, when they give any at all. The story of our
declining ocean world, and our own future, develops beyond the
ken of the public, who forge ahead without altering behavior or
goals, and unimpeded by foresight.

The number of hungry and homeless people in U.S. cities
continued to grow in 2005, despite claims of an improved
economy. Increased demand for vital services rose as needs of
the most destitute went unmet, according to the annual U.S.
Conference of Mayors Report, which has documented increasing
need since its 1982 inception.

The study measures instances of emergency food and housing
assistance in twenty-four U.S. cities and utilizes supplemental
information from the U.S. Census and Department of Labor. More
than three-quarters of cities surveyed reported increases in
demand for food and housing, especially among families. Food aid
requests expanded by 12 percent in 2005, while aid center and
food bank resources grew by only 7 percent. Service providers
estimated 18 percent of requests went unattended. Housing
followed a similar trend, as a majority of cities reported an
increase in demand for emergency shelter, often going unmet due
to lack of resources.

As urban hunger and homelessness increases in America, the
Bush administration is planning to eliminate a U.S. survey
widely used to improve federal and state programs for low-income
and retired Americans, reports Abid Aslam.
President Bushâs proposed budget for fiscal 2007, which begins
October 2006, includes a Commerce Department plan to eliminate
the Census Bureauâs Survey of Income and Program Participation
(SIPP). The proposal marks at least the third White House
attempt in as many years to do away with federal data collection
on politically prickly economic issues.
Founded in 1984, the Census Bureau survey follows American
families for a number of years and monitors their use of
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Social Security,
Medicaid, unemployment insurance, child care, and other health,
social service, and education programs.

Some 415 economists and social scientists signed a letter and
sent it to Congress, shortly after the February release of
Bushâs federal budget proposal, urging that the survey be fully
funded as it âis the only large-scale survey explicitly designed
to analyze the impact of a wide variety of government programs
on the well being of American families.â
Heather Boushey, economist at the Washington, D.C.âbased Center
for Economic and Policy Research told Abid Aslam, âWe need to
know what the effects of these programs are on American families
. . . SIPP is designed to do just that.â Boushey added that the
survey has proved invaluable in tracking the effects of changes
in government programs. So much so that the 1996 welfare reform
law specifically mentioned the survey as the best means to
evaluate the lawâs effectiveness.

Supporters of the survey elimination say the program costs
too much at $40 million per year. They would kill it in
September and eventually replace it with a scaled-down version
that would run to $9.2 million in development costs during the
coming fiscal year. Actual data collection would begin in 2009.

Defenders of the survey counter that the cost is justified as
SIPP âprovides a constant stream of in-depth data that enables
government, academic, and independent researchers to evaluate
the effectiveness and improve the efficiency of several hundred
billion dollars in spending on social programs,â including
homeless shelters and emergency food aid.

UPDATE BY ABID ASLAM
As of the end of May 2006, hundreds of economists and social
scientists remain engaged in a bid to save the U.S. Census
Bureauâs Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP).
Ideologically diverse users describe the survey as pioneering
and say it has helped to improve the uptake and performance of,
and to gauge the effects on American families of changes in
public provisions ranging from Medicaid to Temporary Assistance
to Needy Families and school lunch programs.

A few journalists took notice because users of the data,
including the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy
Research (CEPR), which spearheaded the effort to save SIPP,
chose to make some noise.By most accounts, the matter was a
simple fight over money: the administration was out to cut any
hint of flesh from bureaucratic budgets (perhaps to feed its
foreign policy pursuits) but users of the survey wanted the
money spent on SIPP because, in their view, the program is
valuable and no feasible alternative exists or has been
proposed.

That debate remains to be resolved. Lobbyists expect more
legislative action in June and among them, CEPR remains
available to provide updates.But is it just an isolated budget
fight? This is the third time in as many years that the Bush
administration has triedâand in the previous two cases, failed
under pressure from users and advocatesâto strip funding for
awkward research. In 2003, it had tried to kill the Bureau of
Labor Statistics (BLS) Mass Layoff Statistics report, which
detailed where workplaces with more than fifty employees closed
and what kinds of workers were affected. In 2004 and 2005, it
had attempted to drop questions on the hiring and firing of
women from employment data collected by the BLS. Hardly
big-ticket items on the federal budget, the mass layoffs reports
provided federal and state social service agencies with data
crucial for planning even as it chronicled job losses and the
so-called âjobless recovery.â The womenâs questionnaire
uncovered employment discrimination.

In other words, SIPP and the BLS programs are politically
prickly. They highlight that, regardless of what some
politicians and executives might say, economic and social
problems persist and involve real people whose real needs remain
to be met. This calls to mind the old line about there being
three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. To be
convincing, they must be broadly consistent. If the numbers
donât support the narrative, something simply must give. With
the livelihoods, life chances, and rights of millions of
citizens at stake, these are more than stories about arcane
budget wrangles.

The worldâs most neglected emergency, according to the UN
Emergency Relief Coordinator, is the ongoing tragedy of the
Congo, where six to seven million have died since 1996 as a
consequence of invasions and wars sponsored by western powers
trying to gain control of the regionâs mineral wealth. At stake
is control of natural resources that are sought by U.S.
corporationsâdiamonds, tin, copper, gold, and more
significantly, coltan and niobium, two minerals necessary for
production of cell phones and other high-tech electronics; and
cobalt, an element essential to nuclear, chemical, aerospace,
and defense industries.

Columbo-tantalite, i.e. coltan, is found in
three-billion-year-old soils like those in the Rift Valley
region of Africa. The tantalum extracted from the coltan ore is
used to make tantalum capacitors, tiny components that are
essential in managing the flow of current in electronic devices.
Eighty percent of the worldâs coltan reserves are found in the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Niobium is another high-tech
mineral with a similar story.

Sprocket reports that the high-tech boom of the 1990s caused
the price of coltan to skyrocket to nearly $300 per pound. In
1996 U.S.-sponsored Rwandan and Ugandan forces entered eastern
DRC. By 1998 they seized control and moved into strategic mining
areas. The Rwandan Army was soon making $20 million or more a
month from coltan mining. Though the price of coltan has fallen,
Rwanda maintains its monopoly on coltan and the coltan trade in
DRC. Reports of rampant human rights abuses pour out of this
mining region.

Coltan makes its way out of the mines to trading posts where
foreign traders buy the mineral and ship it abroad, mostly
through Rwanda. Firms with the capability turn coltan into the
coveted tantalum powder, and then sell the magic powder to
Nokia, Motorola, Compaq, Sony, and other manufacturers for use
in cell phones and other products.
Keith Harmon Snow emphasizes that any analysis of the
geopolitics in the Congo, and the reasons for why the Congolese
people have suffered a virtually unending war since 1996,
requires an understanding of the organized crime perpetrated
through multinational businesses. The tragedy of the Congo
conflict has been instituted by invested corporations, their
proxy armies, and the supra-governmental bodies that support
them.

The process is tied to major multinational corporations at
all levels. These include U.S.-based Cabot Corp. and OM Group;
HC Starck of Germany; and Nigncxia of Chinaâcorporations that
have been linked by a United Nations Panel of Experts to the
atrocities in DRC. Extortion, rape, massacres, and bribery are
all part of the criminal networks set up and maintained by huge
multinational companies. Yet as mining in the Congo by western
companies proceeds at an unprecedented rateâsome $6 million in
raw cobalt alone exiting DRC dailyâmultinational mining
companies rarely get mentioned in human rights reports.
Sprocket notes that Sam Bodman, CEO of Cabot during the coltan
boom, was appointed in December 2004 to serve as President
Bushâs Secretary of Energy. Under Bodmanâs leadership from 1987
to 2000, Cabot was one of the U.S.âs largest polluters,
accounting for 60,000 tons of airborne toxic emissions annually.
Snow adds that Sonyâs current Executive Vice President and
General Counsel Nicole Seligman was a former legal adviser for
Bill Clinton. Many who held positions of power in the Clinton
administration moved into high positions with Sony.

The article âBehind the Numbers,â coauthored by Snow and
David Barouski, details a web of U.S. corruption and conflicts
of interest between mining corporations such as Barrick Gold
(see Story #21) and the U.S. government under George H. W. Bush,
Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, as well as U.S. arms dealers
such as Simax; U.S. defense companies such as Lockheed Martin,
Halliburton, Northrop Grumman, GE, Boeing, Raytheon, and
Bechtel; âhumanitarianâ organizations such as CARE, funded by
Lockheed Martin, and International Rescue Committee, whose Board
of Overseers includes Henry Kissinger; âConservationâ interests
that provide the vanguard for western penetration into Central
Africa; and of course, PR firms and news outlets such as the New
York Times.

Sprocket closes his article by noting that itâs not
surprising this information isnât included in the literature and
manuals that come with your cell phones, pagers, computers, or
diamond jewelry. Perhaps, he suggests, mobile phones should be
outfitted with stickers that read: âWarning! This device was
created with raw materials from central Africa. These materials
are rare, nonrenewable, were sold to fund a bloody war of
occupation, and have caused the virtual elimination of
endangered species. Have a nice day.â People need to realize, he
says, that there is a direct link between the gadgets that make
our lives more convenient and sophisticatedâand the reality of
the violence, turmoil, and destruction that plague our world.

UPDATE BY SPROCKET
There are large fortunes to be made in the manufacturing of
high-tech electronics and in selling convenience and
entertainment to American consumers, but at what cost?

Conflicts in Africa are often shrouded with misinformation,
while U.S. and other western interests are routinely downplayed
or omitted by the corporate media. The June 5, 2006, cover story
of Time, entitled âCongo: The Hidden Toll of the Worldâs
Deadliest War,â was no exception. Although the article briefly
mentioned coltan and its use in cell phones and other electronic
devices, no mention was made of the pivotal role this and other
raw materials found in the region play in the conflict. The
story painted the ongoing war as a pitiable and horrible
tragedy, avoiding the corporations and foreign governments that
have created the framework for the violence and those which have
strong financial and political interests in the conflictâs
outcome.

In an article written by Johann Hari and published by The
Hamilton Spectator on May 13, 2006, the corporate media took a
step toward addressing the true reason for the tremendous body
count that continues to pile up in the Democratic Republic of
Congo: âThe only change over the decades has been the resources
snatched for Western consumptionârubber under the Belgians,
diamonds under Mobutu, coltan and casterite today.â

Most disturbing is that in the corporate media, the effect of
this conflict on nonhuman life is totally overlooked. Even with
a high-profile endangered species like the Eastern lowland
gorilla hanging in the balance, almost driven to extinction
through poaching and habitat loss by displaced villagers and
warring factions, the environmental angle of the story is rarely
considered.

The next step in understanding the exploitation and violence
wrought upon the inhabitants of central Africa, fueled by the
hunger for high-tech toys in the U.S., is to expose corporations
like Sony and Motorola. These corporations donât want protest
movements tarnishing their reputations. Nor do they want to call
attention to all of the gorillas coltan kills, and the
guerrillas it feeds.

It is time for our culture to start seeing more value in
living beings, whether gorillas or humans, than in our
disposable high-tech gadgets such as cell phones. It is time to
steal back a more compassionate existence from the corporate
plutocracy that creates destructive markets and from the media
system that has manufactured our consent.

It is not just a question of giving up cell phones (though
that would be a great start). We must question the appropriation
of our planet in the form of a resource to be consumed, rather
than as a home and community to be lived in.

âHigh-Tech Genocideâ and other articles about cell phone
technology are available by contacting the author: sprocket@riseup.net.

UPDATE BY KEITH HARMON SNOW
War for the control of the Democratic Republic of Congoâwhat
should be the richest country in the worldâbegan in Uganda in
the 1980s, when now Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni shot his
way to power with the backing of Buckingham Palace, the White
House, and Tel Aviv behind him.

Paul Kagame, now president of Rwanda, served as Museveniâs
Director of Military Intelligence. Kagame later trained at Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas, before the Rwandan Patriotic Front
(RPF)âbacked by Roger Winter, the U.S. Committee on Refugees,
and the others aboveâinvaded Rwanda. The RPF destabilized and
then secured Rwanda. This coup dâetat is today misunderstood as
the âRwanda Genocide.â What played out in Rwanda in 1994 is now
playing out in Darfur, Sudan; regime change is the goal,
âgenocideâ is the tool of propaganda used to manipulate and
disinform.

In 1996, Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni, with the Pentagon
behind them, launched their covert war against Zaireâs Mobutu
Sese Seko and his western backers. A decade later, there are 6
or 7 million dead, at the very least, and the war in Congo
(Zaire) continues.

If you are reading the mainstream newspapers or listening to
National Public Radio, you are contributing to your own mental
illness, no matter how astute you believe yourself to be at
âbalancingâ or âdecipheringâ the code.
News reports in Time Magazine (âThe Deadliest War In The World,â
June 6, 2006) and on CNN (âRape, Brutality Ignored to Aid Congo
Peace,â May 26, 2006) that appeared at the time of this writing
are being interpreted by conscious people to be truth-telling at
last. However, these are perfect examples filled with hidden
deceptions and manipulations.
For accuracy and truth on Central Africa, look to people like
Robin Philpot (Imperialism Dies Hard), Wayne Madsen (Genocide
and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993â1999), Amos Wilson (The
Falsification of Consciousness), Charles Onana (The Secrets of
the Rwanda GenocideâInvestigation on the Mysteries of a
President), Antoine Lokongo (www.congopanorama.info),
Phil Taylor (www.taylor-report.com),
Christopher Black (âRacism, Murder and Lies in Rwandaâ). World
War 4 Report has published my reports, but they are inconsistent
in their attention to accuracy, and would as quickly adopt the
propaganda, and have done so at times.

It is possible to collect little fragments of truth here and
thereânever counting on the mainstream system for thisâbut one
must beware the deceptions and bias. In this vein, the elite
business journal Africa Confidential is often very revealing.
Some facts can be gleaned from www.DigitalCongo.net and Africa Research Bulletin.

Professor David Gibbâs book The Political Economy of Third
World Intervention: Case of the Congo Crises is an excellent
backgrounder that identifies players still active today
(especially Maurice Tempelsman and his diamonds interests
connected to the Democratic Party). Ditto King Leopoldâs Ghost
by Adam Hocshchild, butâexemplifying the expedience of
âinterestsââremember that Hocshchild never tells you, the
reader, that his father ran a mining company in Congo. Almost
ALL reportage is expedient; one needs take care their propensity
to be deceived.

Professor Ruth Mayerâs book Artificial Africas: Colonial
Images in the Times of Globalization is a particularly poignant
articulation of the means by which the âmediaâ system distorts
and manipulates all things African. And, never forget www.AllThingsPass.com.

Also hoping to correct the record and reveal the truth, the
International Forum for Truth and Justice in the Great Lakes of
Africa (www.veritasrwandaforum.org),
based in Spain, and co-founded by Nobel Prize nominee Juan
Carrero Seraleegui, is involved in a groundbreaking lawsuit
charging massive crimes against humanity and acts of genocide
were committed by the now government of Rwanda.

Special Counsel Scott Bloch, appointed by President Bush in
2004, is overseeing the virtual elimination of federal
whistleblower rights in the U.S. government.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the agency that is
supposed to protect federal employees who blow the whistle on
waste, fraud, and abuse is dismissing hundreds of cases while
advancing almost none. According to the Annual Report for 2004
(which was not released until the end of first quarter fiscal
year 2006) less than 1.5 percent of whistleblower claims were
referred for investigation while more than 1000 reports were
closed before they were even opened. Only eight claims were
found to be substantiated, and one of those included the theft
of a desk, while another included attendance violations.
Favorable outcomes have declined 24 percent overall, and this is
all in the first year that the new special counsel, Scott Bloch,
has been in office.

Bloch, who has received numerous complaints since he took
office, defends his first thirteen months in office by pointing
to a decline in backlogged cases. Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility (PEER) Executive Director Jeff Ruch
says, â. . . backlogs and delays are bad, but they are not as
bad as simply dumping the cases altogether.â According to
figures released by Bloch in February of 2005 more than 470
claims of retaliation were dismissed, and not once had he
affirmatively represented a whistleblower. In fact, in order to
speed dismissals, Bloch instituted a rule forbidding his staff
from contacting a whistleblower if their disclosure was deemed
incomplete or ambiguous. Instead, the OSC would dismiss the
matter. As a result, hundreds of whistleblowers never had a
chance to justify their cases. Ruch notes that these numbers are
limited to only the backlogged cases and do not include new
ones.

On March 3, 2005, OSC staff members joined by a coalition of
whistleblower protection and civil rights organizations filed a
complaint against Bloch. His own employees accused him of
violating the very rules he is supposed to be enforcing. The
complaint specifies instances of illegal gag orders, cronyism,
invidious discrimination, and retaliation by forcing the
resignation of one-fifth of the OSC headquarters legal and
investigative staff. The complaint was filed with the
Presidentâs Council on Integrity and Efficiency, which took no
action on the case for seven months. PEER was one of the groups
who co-filed the complaint against Bloch and Ruch wants to know,
âWho watches the watchdogs?â

This is the third probe into Blochâs operation in less than
two years in office. Both the Government Accountability Office
and a U.S. Senate subcommittee have ongoing investigations into
mass dismissals of whistleblower cases, crony hires, and Blochâs
targeting of gay employees for removal while refusing to
investigate cases involving discrimination on the basis of
sexual orientation.

The Department of Labor has also gotten on board in a
behind-the-scenes maneuver to cancel whistleblower protections.
If it succeeds, the Labor Department will dismiss claims by
federal workers who report violations under the Clean Air Act
and the Safe Drinking Water Act. General Counsel for PEER,
Richard Condit says, âFederal workers in agencies such as the
Environmental Protection Agency function as the publicâs eyes
and ears . . . the Labor Department is moving to shut down one
of the few legal avenues left to whistleblowers.â The Labor
Department is trying to invoke the ancient doctrine of sovereign
immunity, which says that the government cannot be sued without
its consent. The Secretary of Laborâs Administrative Review
Board recently invited the EPA to raise a sovereign immunity
defense in a case where a woman was trying to enforce earlier
victories. Government Accountability Project General Counsel
Joanne Royce sums up major concerns: âWe do not want public
servants wondering whether they will lose their jobs for acting
against pollution violations of politically well-connected
interests.â

UPDATE BY JEFF RUCH
With the decline in oversight by the U.S. Congress and the
uneven quality of investigative journalism, outlets such as the
U.S. Office of Special Counsel become even more important
channels for governmental transparency. Unfortunately, under the
Bush-appointed Special Counsel, this supposed haven for
whistleblowers has become a beacon of false hope for thousands.

Each year, hundreds of civil servants who witness problems
ranging from threats to public safety to waste of tax funds find
that their reports of wrongdoing are stonewalled by the Office
of Special Counsel (OSC). Consequently, these firsthand accounts
of malfeasance are not investigated and almost uniformly never
reach the publicâs attention.
The importance of this state of affairs is that the actual
workings of federal agencies are becoming more shrouded in
secrecy and disinformation. Americans are less informed about
their government and less able to be in connection with the
people who actually work for themâthe public servants.

In a recent development, employees within the OSC have filed
a whistleblower complaint about the Special Counsel, the person
who is supposed to be the chief whistleblower defender. After
several months delay, the Bush White House assigned this
complaint to the Inspector General for the Office of Personnel
Management for review. This supposedly independent investigation
has just begun in earnest, nearly one year after the complaint
was filed.

Also, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a
report in May 2006 blasting the Bush-appointed Special Counsel
for ignoring competitive bidding rules in handing out consultant
contracts. GAO also recommended creating an independent channel
whereby Office of Special Counsel employees can blow the whistle
on further abuses by the Special Counsel.

In another recent development, PEERâs lawsuit against the
Special Counsel to force release of documents concerning crony
hires has produced more, heavily redacted documents showing that
these sole source consultants apparently did no identifiable
work. Ironically, the PEER suit was filed under the Freedom of
Information Act, a law that the Special Counsel is also charged
with policing.

And in a new annual report to Congress, OSC (stung by
criticism about declining performance) has, for the first time,
stopped disclosing the number of whistleblower cases where it
obtained a favorable outcome. Consequently, it is impossible to
tell if anyone is actually being helped by the agency.

PEERâs web page on the Office of Special Counsel has posted
all developments since this story and also allows a reader to
trace the storyâs genesis.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released documents
of forty-four autopsies held in Afghanistan and Iraq October 25,
2005. Twenty-one of those deaths were listed as homicides. The
documents show that detainees died during and after
interrogations by Navy SEALs, Military Intelligence, and Other
Government Agency (OGA).
âThese documents present irrefutable evidence that U.S.
operatives tortured detainees to death during interrogation,â
said Amrit Singh, an attorney with the ACLU. âThe public has a
right to know who authorized the use of torture techniques and
why these deaths have been covered up.â

The Department of Defense released the autopsy reports in
response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the
ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human
Rights, Veterans for Common Sense, and Veterans for Peace.

One of forty-four U.S. military autopsy reports reads as
follows: âFinal Autopsy Report: DOD 003164, (Detainee) Died as a
result of asphyxia (lack of oxygen to the brain) due to
strangulation as evidenced by the recently fractured hyoid bone
in the neck and soft tissue hemorrhage extending downward to the
level of the right thyroid cartilage. Autopsy revealed bone
fracture, rib fractures, contusions in mid abdomen, back and
buttocks extending to the left flank, abrasions, lateral
buttocks. Contusions, back of legs and knees; abrasions on
knees, left fingers and encircling to left wrist. Lacerations
and superficial cuts, right 4th and 5th fingers. Also, blunt
force injuries, predominately recent contusions (bruises) on the
torso and lower extremities. Abrasions on left wrist are
consistent with use of restraints. No evidence of defense
injuries or natural disease. Manner of death is homicide.
Whitehorse Detainment Facility, Nasiriyah, Iraq.â
Another report from the ACLU indicates: âa 27-year-old Iraqi
male died while being interrogated by Navy Seals on April 5,
2004, in Mosul, Iraq. During his confinement he was hooded,
flex-cuffed, sleep deprived and subjected to hot and cold
environmental conditions, including the use of cold water on his
body and head. The exact cause of death was âundeterminedâ
although the autopsy stated that hypothermia may have
contributed to his death.â
An overwhelming majority of the so-called ânatural deathsâ
covered in the autopsies were attributed to âarteriosclerotic
cardiovascular diseaseâ (heart attack). Persons under extreme
stress and pain may have heart attacks as a result of the
circumstances of their detainments.

The Associated Press carried the story of the ACLU charges on
their wire service. However, a thorough check of LexisNexis and
ProQuest electronic data bases, using the keywords ACLU and
autopsy, showed that at least 95 percent of the daily papers in
the U.S. did not bother to pick up the story. The Los Angeles
Times covered the story on page A4 with a 635-word report
headlined âAutopsies Support Abuse Allegations.â Fewer than a
dozen other daily newspapers including: Bangor Daily News,
Maine, page 8; Telegraph-Herald, Dubuque, Iowa, page 6;
Charleston Gazette, page 5; Advocate, Baton Rouge, page 11; and
a half dozen others actually covered the story. The Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette and the Seattle Times buried the story inside
general Iraq news articles. USA Today posted the story on their
website. MSNBC posted the story to their website, but apparently
did not consider it newsworthy enough to air on television.
Janis Karpinski, U.S. Brigadier General Commander of the 800th
Military Police Brigade, was in charge of seventeen prison
facilities in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2003.
Karpinski testified January 21, 2006 in New York City at the
International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes against Humanity
Committed by the Bush administration. Karpinski stated: âGeneral
[Ricardo] Sanchez [commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq]
signed the eight-page memorandum authorizing a laundry list of
harsh techniques in interrogations to include specific use of
dogs and muzzled dogs with his specific permission.â Karpinski
went on to claim that Major General Geoffrey Miller, who had
been âspecifically selected by the Secretary of Defense to go to
Guantanamo Bay and run the interrogations operations,â was
dispatched to Iraq by the Bush administration to âwork with the
military intelligence personnel to teach them new and improved
interrogation techniques.â When asked how far up the chain of
command responsibility for the torture orders for Abu Ghraib
went, Karpinski said, âThe Secretary of Defense would not have
authorized without the approval of the Vice President.â

UPDATE BY DAHR JAMAIL
This story, published in March 2006, was merely a snapshot of
the ongoing and worsening policy of the Bush administration
regarding torture. And not just time, but places show snapshots
of the criminal policy of the current administrationâIraq, like
GuantĂĄnamo Bay, Cuba, Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, and
other âsecretâ U.S. military detention centers in Eastern
European countries are physical examples of an ongoing policy
which breaches both international law and our very constitution.

But breaking international and domestic law has not been a
concern of an administration led by a âpresidentâ who has
claimed âauthorityâ to disobey over 750 laws passed by Congress.
In fact, when this same individual does things like signing a
secret order in 2002 which authorized the National Security
Agency to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by
wiretapping the phones of U.S. citizens, and then goes on to
allow the secret collection of the telephone records of tens of
millions of Americans, torture is but one portion of this
corrupted picture. This is a critical ongoing story, not just
because it violates international and domestic law, but this
state-sanctioned brutality, bankrupt of any morality and
decency, is already coming back home to haunt Americans. When
U.S. soldiers are captured in Iraq or another foreign country,
what basis does the U.S. have now to ask for their fair and
humane treatment? And with police brutality and draconian
âsecurityâ measures becoming more real within the U.S. with each
passing day, why wouldnât these policies be visited upon U.S.
citizens?

While torture is occasionally glimpsed by mainstream media
outlets such as the Washington Post and Time Magazine, we must
continue to rely on groups like the Center for Constitutional
Rights in New York City, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty
International who cover the subject thoroughly, persistently,
and unlike (of course) any corporate media outlets.
Since I wrote this story, there continues to be a deluge of
information and proof of the Bush administration continuing and
even widening their policy of torture, as well as their
rendering prisoners to countries which have torturing human
beings down to a science.

All of this, despite the fact that U.S. laws prohibit torture
absolutely, clearly stating that torture is never, ever
permitted, even in a time of war.

The Department of Defense has been granted exemption from the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In December 2005, Congress
passed the 2006 Defense Authorization Act which renders Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) âoperational filesâ fully immune to
FOIA requests, the main mechanism by which watchdog groups,
journalists and individuals can access federal documents. Of
particular concern to critics of the Defense Authorization Act
is the DIAâs new right to thwart access to files that may reveal
human rights violations tied to ongoing âcounterterrorismâ
efforts.
The rule could, for instance, frustrate the work of the American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other organizations that have
relied on FOIA to uncover more than 30,000 documents on the U.S.
militaryâs involvement in the torture and mistreatment of
foreign detainees in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and
Iraqâincluding the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Several key documents that have surfaced in the advocacy
organizationâs expansive research originate from DIA files,
including a 2004 memorandum containing evidence that U.S.
military interrogators brutalized detainees in Baghdad, as well
as a report describing the abuse of Iraqi detainees as
violations of international human rights law.

According to Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU attorney involved in the
ongoing torture investigations, âIf the Defense Intelligence
Agency can rely on exception or exemption from the FOIA, then
documents such as those that we obtained this last time around
will not become public at all.â The end result of such an
exemption, he told The New Standard, is that âabuse is much more
likely to take place, because thereâs not public oversight of
Defense Intelligence Agency activity.â

Jaffer added that because the DIA conducts investigations
relating to other national security-related agencies, documents
covered by the exemption could contain critical evidence of how
other parts of the military operate as well.

he ACLU recently battled the FOIA exemption rule of the CIA
in a lawsuit over the agencyâs attempt to withhold information
concerning alleged abuse of Iraqi detainees. The CIAâs defense
centered on the invocation of FOIA exemption, and although a
federal judge ultimately overrode the rule, Jaffer cited the
case as evidence of âexemption creepââthe gradual stretching of
the law to further shield federal agencies from public scrutiny.

According to language in the Defense Authorization Act, an
operational file can be any information related to âthe conduct
of foreign intelligence or counterintelligence operations or
intelligence or security liaison arrangements or information
exchanges with foreign governments or their intelligence or
security services.â

Critics warn that such vague bureaucratic language is a green
light for the DIA to thwart a wide array of legitimate
information requests without proper justification. Steven
Aftergood, director of the research organization Project on
Government Secrecy, warns, âIf it falls in the category of
âoperational files,â itâs over before it begins.â

Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive,
adds, âThese exemptions create a black hole into which the
bureaucracy can drive just about any kind of information it
wants to. And you can bet that GuantĂĄnamo, Abu Ghraib-style
information is what DIA and others would want to hide.â

The Newspaper Association of America reports that, due to
lobbying efforts of the Sunshine in Government Initiative and
other open government advocates, congressional negotiators
imposed an unprecedented two-year âsunsetâ date on the
Pentagonâs FOIA exemption, ending in December 2007.

Update by Michelle Chen:
The Defense Intelligence Agency, the intelligence arm of the
Department of Defense, has been a source for critical
information on the Pentagon's foreign operations as well as the
DIA's observations of the conduct of other branches of the
military. Its request for immunity from the Freedom of
Information Act last year was not the first attempt to shield
its data from members of the public, but it did come at a time
that the governent's anti-terror fervor was beginning to crest.

Open-government groups warn that such an exemption from FOIA
requests, which the Central Intelligene Agency already enjoys,
would close off a major channel for information in a government
bureaucracy already riddled with both formal and informal
barriers of secrecy. The Pentagon's request alarmed groups like
the ACLU, which has relied heavily on such data to build cases
regarding torture and abuse of detainees in Iraq. (http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/042005/).

The bill specifically refers to the immunity of "operational
files," though this is somewhat ambiguously defined.

Another development in this issue area over the past year is
that secrecy and intelligence gathering have become intense
domestic political issues. As a result, heightened public
attention to the gradual rollback on open-government laws is
beginning to stir some congressional action in the form of
hearings and investigative reports, not just related to
classified information per se but also the new quasi-classified
categories that have cropped up since 9/11 (http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2006/index.html).

Earlier this year, the Pentagon initiatied a department-wide
review of FOIA practices, though it is unlear whether this
internal evaluation will lead to actual changes in how
information is disclosed or withheld from public purview. (http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/foi/DoD_FOIA_Review.pdf).

The National Security Archives at George Washington
University, which has an extensive collection of FOIA documents
and has issued numerous reports and studies on government
secrecy and FOIA policies: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/foia.html

#9 The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall

Sources:

Left Turn Issue #18
Title: âCementing Israeli Apartheid: The Role of World Bankâ
Author: Jamal Jumaâ

Despite the 2004 International Court of Justice (ICJ)
decision that called for tearing down the Wall and compensating
affected communities, construction of the Wall has accelerated.
The route of the barrier runs deep into Palestinian territory,
aiding the annexation of Israeli settlements and the breaking of
Palestinian territorial continuity. The World Bankâs vision of
âeconomic development,â however, evades any discussion of the
Wallâs illegality.
The World Bank has meanwhile outlined the framework for a
Palestinian Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) policy in their
most recent report on Palestine published in December of 2004,
âStagnation or Revival: Israeli Disengagement and Palestinian
Economic Prospects.â
Central to World Bank proposals are the construction of massive
industrial zones to be financed by the World Bank and other
donors and controlled by the Israeli Occupation. Built on
Palestinian land around the Wall, these industrial zones are
envisaged as forming the basis of export-orientated economic
development. Palestinians imprisoned by the Wall and
dispossessed of land can be put to work for low wages.
The post-Wall MEFTA vision includes complete control over
Palestinian movement. The report proposes high-tech military
gates and checkpoints along the Wall, through which Palestinians
and exports can be conveniently transported and controlled. A
supplemental âtransfer systemâ of walled roads and tunnels will
allow Palestinian workers to be funneled to their jobs, while
being simultaneously denied access to their land. Sweatshops
will be one of very few possibilities of earning a living for
Palestinians confined to disparate ghettos throughout the West
Bank. The World Bank states:

âIn an improved operating environment, Palestinian
entrepreneurs and foreign investors will look for well-serviced
industrial land and supporting infrastructure. They will also
seek a regulatory regime with a minimum of âred tapeâ and with
clear procedures for conducting business. Industrial Estates
(IEs), particularly those on the border between Palestinian and
Israeli territory, can fulfill this need and thereby play an
important role in supporting export based growth.â

Jamal Jumaâ notes that the âred tapeâ which the World Bank
refers to can be presumed to mean trade unions, a minimum wage,
good working conditions, environmental protection, and other
workersâ rights that will be more flexible than the ones in the
âdevelopedâ world. The World Bank explicitly states that current
wages of Palestinians are too high for the region and
âcompromise the international competitivenessâ even though wages
are only a quarter of the average in Israel. Jumaâ warns that on
top of a military occupation and forced expulsion, Palestinians
are to be subjects of an economic colonialism.
These industrial zones will clearly benefit Israel abroad where
goods âMade in Palestineâ have more favorable trade conditions
in international markets. IPS reporter Emad Mekay, in February
2005, revealed the World Bankâs plan to partially fund
Palestinian MEFTA infrastructure with loans to Palestine. Israel
is not eligible for World Bank lending because of its high per
capita income, but Palestine is. Mekay quotes Terry Walz of the
Washington-based Council for the National Interest, a group that
monitors U.S. and international policy towards Israel and the
Palestinians: âI must admit that making the Palestinians pay for
the modernization of these checkpoints is an embarrassment,
since they had nothing to do with the erection of the separation
wall to begin with and in fact have protested it. I think the
whole issue is extremely murky.â1
Mekay goes on to note that this is the first time the World Bank
appears ready to get actively involved in the Israeli occupation
of Palestinian land. Former World Bank president James
Wolfensohn rejected this possibility last year. Neo-conservative
Paul Wolfowitz was, however, confirmed as president of the World
Bank on June 1, 2005.
In breach of the ICJ ruling, the U.S. has already contributed
$50 million to construct gates along the Wall to âhelp serve the
needs of Palestinians.â
Linda Heard reports for Al-Jazeerah that the U.S. is currently
pushing for bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with various
Arab states, including members of the Gulf Cooperation Council
(GCC), as part of a vision for a larger Middle East Free Trade
Agreement. President Bush hopes the MEFTA will encompass some
twenty regional countries, including Israel, and be fully
consolidated by 2013.
Many in the region are suspicious of the divisive trend of
bilateral agreements with the U.S. and worry that the GCC will
end up with small, fragmented satellite economies without any
leverage against world giants. Prince Saud Al-Faisal, the Saudi
foreign minister, stated, âIt is alarming to see some members of
the GCC enter into separate agreements with international powers
. . . They diminish the collective bargaining power and weaken
not only the solidarity of the GCC as a whole, but also each of
its members.â

UPDATE BY JAMAL JUMAâ
â Cementing Israeli Apartheid: The Role of the World Bankâ was
written last summer as part of Stop the Wallâs campaign efforts
to widen attention of those horrified by the construction of the
700 km long wall around Palestinian cities and villages. It
aimed to expose the vicious mechanism of control, exploitation,
and dispossession devised by the Occupation, but moreover the
activities of the international community in safeguarding the
Wall and making Palestinian ghettos sustainable.
It opens a chapter in a story that no one wants to hear: the
globalization of apartheid in the Occupation of Palestine.
Zionism has its own racist interest in ghettoizing 4 million
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and securing the
judaization of Jerusalem. It ensures a Jewish demographic
majority and ethnic supremacy over as much of Palestine as
possible, working against all UN resolutions and the recent ICJ
ruling on the Wall.
Within this project it finds allies in the international
community keen to exploit cheap Palestinian labor locked behind
Walls and gates. The degree to which Zionism and the
international communityâheaded by the World Bankâwork together
with the aim of controlling every aspect of Palestinian life has
become increasingly evident since the Left Turn article.
The Palestinian Authorityâs (PA) role is reduced to the
administrators of the Bantustans. The Palestinian people
resoundingly said no to Bantustans at the ballot boxes last
January.
While the Bankâs initial responsibility was to devise economic
policies for the sustainability of a Palestinian Bantu-State,
the institution is now facilitating efforts to ensure that
Palestinians cannot interfere in the plans of the Occupation and
the international community. The World Bank is gearing up to
take over the payrolls of various Palestinian institutions,
should the PA not comply with Zionist and global interests.
While global IFIs meticulously plan the financial and material
survival and political control of the ghettos, Ehud Olmert
offers the slogan of âFinal Bordersâ to describe the project. In
legitimizing the Wall, annexing Jerusalem, increasing the number
of settlers, and denying the mere existence of the refugees,
Olmert finds a willing accomplice in the Bank and its policy
makers in Washington, who look to cash in on the Bantu-State.
The Palestinian people will never accept the plan, so it is
hoped that they will be starved into it. But we will not kneel
down. After dozens of massacres, killings, arrests, and almost
sixty years of life in the Diaspora, surrender is too high a
price to pay. We are not asking for outside institutions to
provide us with bread, but to comply with their duties under
international law and support our struggle for justice and
liberation.
None of the horrific realities of life in Palestine are apparent
in the headlines and doublespeak of mass media and international
diplomacy, where our ghettoization is called âstate-building.â
International complicity with Israeli apartheid is dressed up as
âhumanitarian aid.â Palestinians are supposed to be grateful for
gates in the Wall so they can be funneled between ghettos.
Just like Olmertâs schemes with the White House, the media shuns
and neglects the rights and voices of Palestinians. Neither the
daily killing of our people, nor the destruction of our homes,
the dispossession of our farmers, or the sufferings of 6 million
refugees make headlines. The consumers of mainstream media
outlets are left to discuss the diatribe of âpeaceâ and
âborders,â disputed between the protagonists of our oppression,
while the racism, ethnic cleansing, and ghettoization continue.

More information on the issue is to be found at our website:
http://www.stopthewall.org

#10 Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians

Sources:

The New Yorker, December 2005
Title: "Up in the Air"
Author: Seymour M. Hersh

There is widespread speculation that President Bush,
confronted by diminishing approval ratings and dissent within
his own party as well as within the military itself, will begin
pulling American troops out of Iraq in 2006. A key element of
the drawdown plans not mentioned in the Presidentâs public
statements, or in mainstream media for that matter, is that the
departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower.

âWeâre not planning to diminish the war,â Seymour Hersh
quotes Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington
Institute, whose views often mirror those of Dick Cheney and
Donald Rumsfeld. âWe just want to change the mix of the forces
doing the fightingâIraqi infantry with American support and
greater use of airpower.â

While battle fatigue increases among U.S. troops, the
prospect of using airpower as a substitute for American troops
on the ground has caused great unease within the military. Air
Force commanders, in particular, have deep-seated objections to
the possibility that Iraqis will eventually be responsible for
target selection. Hersh quotes a senior military planner now on
assignment in the Pentagon, âWill the Iraqis call in air strikes
in order to snuff rivals, or other warlords, or to snuff members
of their own sect and blame someone else? Will some Iraqis be
targeting on behalf of al-Qaeda, or the insurgency, or the
Iranians?â

Dahr Jamail reports that the statistics gleaned from U.S.
Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF) indicate a massive rise in
the number of U.S. air missionsâ996 sortiesâin Iraq in the month
of November 2005.
The size of this figure naturally begs the question, where are
such missions being flown and what is their size and nature?
Itâs important to note as well that âair warâ does not simply
mean U.S. Air Force. Carrier-based Navy and Marine aircraft flew
over 21,000 hours of missions and dropped over twenty-six tons
of ordnance in Fallujah alone during the November 2004 siege of
that city.

Visions of a frightful future in Iraq should not overshadow
the devastation already caused by present levels of American air
power loosed, in particular, on heavily populated urban areas of
that country. The tactic of using massively powerful 500 and
1,000 pound bombs in urban areas to target small pockets of
resistance fighters has, in fact, long been employed in Iraq. No
intensification of the air war is necessary to make it
commonplace. Jamailâs article provides a broad overview of the
air power arsenals being used against the people of Iraq.

A serious study of violence to civilians in Iraq by a British
medical journal, The Lancet, released in October 2004, estimated
that 85 percent of all violent deaths in Iraq are generated by
coalition forces (see Censored 2006, Story #2). 95 percent of
reported killings (all attributed to U.S. forces by
interviewees) were caused by helicopter gunships, rockets, or
other forms of aerial weaponry.1 While no significant scientific
inquiry has been carried out in Iraq recently, Iraqi medical
personnel, working in areas where U.S. military operations
continue, report that they feel the âvast majorityâ of civilian
deaths are the result of actions by the occupation forces.

Given the U.S. air power already being applied largely in
Iraqâs cities and towns, the prospect of increasing it is
chilling indeed. As to how this might benefit the embattled Bush
administration, Jamail quotes U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel
Karen Kwiatkowski:

âShifting the mechanism of the destruction of Iraq from
soldiers and Marines to distant and safer air power would be
successful in several ways. It would reduce the negative
publicity value of maimed American soldiers and Marines, would
bring a portion of our troops home and give the Army a necessary
operational break. It would increase Air Force and Naval
budgets, and line defense contractor pockets. By the time we
figure out that it isnât working to make oil more secure or to
allow Iraqis to rebuild a stable country, the Army will have
recovered and can be redeployed in force.â

Note
1. Les Roberts, et al., âMortality Before and After the 2003
Invasion of Iraq,â The Lancet, October 29, 2004.

UPDATE BY DAHR JAMAIL
Eleven days after this story about the lack of reportage in the
corporate media about the U.S. militaryâs increasing use of air
power in Iraq, the Washington Post ran a story about how U.S.
air strikes were taking an increasing toll on civilians. Aside
from that story, the Washington Post, along with the New York
Times, remain largely mute on the issue, despite the fact that
the U.S. use of air strikes in Iraq has now become the norm
rather than being used in contingencies, as they were in the
first year of the occupation. Needless to say, corporate media
television coverage has remained the same as it did prior to the
publishing of this storyâthey prefer to portray a U.S.
occupation of Iraq sans warplanes dropping bombs in civilian
neighborhoods.

This story remains a critical issue when one evaluates the
occupation of Iraq, for the number of civilians dying, now
possibly as high as 300,000 according to Les Roberts, one of the
authors of the famous Lancet Report, only continues to escalate.
This is, of course, due in large part to U.S. war planes and
helicopters dropping bombs and missiles into urban areas in
various Iraqi cities.

It is also important when one looks at the fact that more
than 82 percent of Iraqis now vehemently oppose the occupation,
because one of the biggest recruiting tools for the Iraqi
resistance is U.S. bombs and missiles killing the innocent.
Years from now when a corporate media outlet decides to break
down and acknowledge that the level of anti-American sentiment
in Iraq is as high (or higher) than it is anywhere in the world,
and asks the mindless question, âWhy do they hate us?â one will
only need to look towards the indiscriminate use of air power on
the Iraqi population.
This story was not difficult to write for two reasons: the first
was that any reporter in Iraq with eyes and ears knows there is
a vast amount of air power being projected by the U.S. military.
Secondly, thanks to the Internet, statistics on sorties are
readily available to anyone willing to look. Googling âCENTAFâ
brings up several âAir Power Summaryâ reports, where one is able
to find how many missions, and what type, are being flown each
month in Iraq, as well as other countries.

To monitor the number of Iraqi civilians being killed by
these missions, along with other deaths caused by the U.S.
occupation of Iraq, the Iraqi Mortality Survey published in the
prestigious British Lancet medical journal, albeit eighteen
months out of date and a highly conservative estimate by the
authors admission, remains by far and away the most accurate to
date.

One thing is for certain, and that is the longer the failed
U.S. occupation of Iraq persists, the more U.S. air power will
be usedâa scenario that closely resembles that of the shameful
Vietnam War.

Several recent studies confirm fears that genetically
modified (GM) foods damage human health. These studies were
released as the World Trade Organization (WTO) moved toward
upholding the ruling that the European Union has violated
international trade rules by stopping importation of GM foods.

Research by the Russian Academy of Sciences released in
December 2005 found that more than half of the offspring of
rats fed GM soy died within the first three weeks of life,
six times as many as those born to mothers fed on
non-modified soy. Six times as many offspring fed GM soy
were also severely underweight.

In November 2005, a private research institute in
Australia, CSIRO Plant Industry, put a halt to further
development of a GM pea cultivator when it was found to
cause an immune response in laboratory mice.1

In the summer of 2005, an Italian research team led by a
cellular biologist at the University of Urbino published
confirmation that absorption of GM soy by mice causes
development of misshapen liver cells, as well as other
cellular anomalies.

In May of 2005 the review of a highly confidential and
controversial Monsanto report on test results of corn
modified with Monsanto MON863 was published in The
Independent/UK.

Dr. Arpad Pusztai (see Censored 2001, Story #7), one of the
few genuinely independent scientists specializing in plant
genetics and animal feeding studies, was asked by the German
authorities in the autumn of 2004 to examine Monsantoâs
1,139-page report on the feeding of MON863 to laboratory rats
over a ninety-day period.

The study found âstatistically significantâ differences in
kidney weights and certain blood parameters in the rats fed the
GM corn as compared with the control groups. A number of
scientists across Europe who saw the study (and heavily-censored
summaries of it) expressed concerns about the health and safety
implications if MON863 should ever enter the food chain. There
was particular concern in France, where Professor Gilles-Eric
Seralini of the University of Caen has been trying (without
success) for almost eighteen months to obtain full disclosure of
all documents relating to the MON863 study.

Dr. Pusztai was forced by the German authorities to sign a
âdeclaration of secrecyâ before he was allowed to see the
Monsanto rat feeding study, on the grounds that the document is
classified as âCBIâ or âconfidential business interest.â While
Pusztai is still bound by the declaration of secrecy, Monsanto
recently declared that it does not object to the widespread
dissemination of the âPusztai Report.â2

Monsanto GM soy and corn are widely consumed by Americans at
a time when the United Nationsâ Food and Agriculture
Organization has concluded, âIn several cases, GMOs have been
put on the market when safety issues are not clear.â

As GMO research is not encouraged by U.S. or European
governments, the vast majority of toxicological studies are
conducted by those companies producing and promoting consumption
of GMOs. With motive and authenticity of results suspect in
corporate testing, independent scientific research into the
effects of GM foods is attracting increasing attention.

Comment: In May 2006 the WTO upheld a ruling
that European countries broke international trade rules by
stopping importation of GM foods. The WTO verdict found that the
EU has had an effective ban on biotech foods since 1998 and
sided with the U.S., Canada, and Argentina in a decision that
the moratorium was illegal under WTO rules.3

The Bush administration plans to resume production of
antipersonnel landmine systems in a move that is at odds with
both the international community and previous U.S. policy,
according to the leading human rights organization, Human Rights
Watch (HRW).

Nearly every nation has endorsed the goal of a global ban on
antipersonnel mines. In 1994 the U.S. called for the âeventual
eliminationâ of all such mines, and in 1996 President Bill
Clinton said the U.S. would âseek a worldwide agreement as soon
as possible to end the use of all antipersonnel mines.â The U.S.
produced its last antipersonnel landmine in 1997. It had been
the stated objective of the U.S. government to eventually join
the 145 countries signatory to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which
bans the use, production, exporting, and stockpiling of
antipersonnel landmines.
The Bush administration, however, made an about-face in U.S.
antipersonnel landmine policy in February 2004, when it
abandoned any plan to join the Mine Ban Treaty, also known as
the Ottawa Convention. âThe United States will not join the
Ottawa Convention because its terms would have required us to
give up a needed military capability,â the U.S. Department of
Stateâs Bureau of Political-Military announced, summing up the
administrationâs new policy, âThe United States will continue to
develop non-persistent anti-personnel and anti-tank landmines.â

HRW reports that, âNew U.S. landmines will have a variety of
ways of being initiated, both command-detonation (that is, when
a soldier decides when to explode the mine, sometimes called
âman-in-the-loopâ) and traditional victim-activation. A mine
that is designed to be exploded by the presence, proximity, or
contact of a person (i.e., victim-activation) is prohibited
under the International Mine Ban Treaty.â

To sidestep international opposition, the Pentagon proposes
development of the âSpiderâ system, which consists of a control
unit capable of monitoring up to eighty-four hand-placed,
unattended munitions that deploy a web of tripwires across an
area. Once a wire is touched, a man-in-the-loop control system
allows the operator to activate the devices.
The Spider, however, contains a âbattlefield overrideâ feature
that allows for circumvention of the man-in-the-loop, and
activation by the target (victim).

A Pentagon report to Congress stated, âTarget Activation is a
software feature that allows the man-in-the-loop to change the
capability of a munition from requiring action by an operator
prior to being detonated, to a munition that will be detonated
by a target. The Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the
Service Chiefs, using best military judgment, feel that the
man-in-the-loop system without this feature would be
insufficient to meet tactical operational conditions and
electronic countermeasures.â

The U.S. Army spent $135 million between fiscal years 1999
and 2004 to develop Spider and another $11 million has been
requested to complete research and development. A total of $390
million is budgeted to produce 1,620 Spider systems and 186,300
munitions. According to budget documents released in February
2005, the Pentagon requested $688 million for research on and
$1.08 billion for the production of new landmine systems between
fiscal years 2006 and 2011.

Steven Goose, Director of HRW Arms Division, told Project
Censored that Congress has required a report from the Pentagon
on the humanitarian consequences of the âbattlefield overrideâ
or victim-activated feature of these munitions for review before
approving funds. Though production was set for December of 2005,
Congress has not, as of June 2006, received this preliminary
Pentagon report.

If the Spider or similar mine munitions systems move forward,
a frightening precedence will be set. At best the 145
signatories to the Ottawa Convention will be beholden to the
treaty, which forbids assistance in joint military operations
where landmines are being used. At worst, U.S. production will
legitimize international resumption of landmine proliferation.

Steven Goose warns, âIf one doesnât insist on a comprehensive
ban on all types and uses of antipersonnel mines, each nation
will be able to claim unique requirements and justifications.â

UPDATE BY ISAAC BAKER
Landmines are horrific weapons. And, naturally, news stories
about the terror they inflict upon human beingsâmainly
civiliansâare gritty and disturbing if they are truthful.
Especially when itâs your own government thatâs responsible.
And given the mainstream mediaâs typical service to power, this
story didnât make many headlines.

But the potential ramifications of the U.S. government
resuming production of landmines are overwhelming. And since the
average American canât depend on many media to inform them of
the horrific things their government is doing, concerned people
must take it upon themselves to put their government in its
place.

We all must ask ourselves: Do we want our governmentâthe body
that theoretically represents we, the peopleâspending millions
upon millions of dollars on these destructive weapons? Are we
comfortable with sitting back and letting our government produce
weapons that kill and maim civilians?

Or will we coalesce and let the powerful know that we will
not stand for this gross disregard for human life and
international opinion?

Itâs our responsibility to stop the abuses of power in our
country. And if we do not confront our government on this issue,
I believe, the blood of the innocents will be on all of our
hands.

New studies from both sides of the Atlantic reveal that
Roundup, the most widely used weedkiller in the world, poses
serious human health threats. More than 75 percent of
genetically modified (GM) crops are engineered to tolerate the
absorption of Roundupâit eliminates all plants that are not GM.
Monsanto Inc., the major engineer of GM crops, is also the
producer of Roundup. Thus, while Roundup was formulated as a
weapon against weeds, it has become a prevalent ingredient in
most of our food crops.

Three recent studies show that Roundup, which is used by
farmers and home gardeners, is not the safe product we have been
led to trust.

A group of scientists led by biochemist Professor Gilles-Eric
Seralini from the University of Caen in France found that human
placental cells are very sensitive to Roundup at concentrations
lower than those currently used in agricultural application.

An epidemiological study of Ontario farming populations
showed that exposure to glyphosate, the key ingredient in
Roundup, nearly doubled the risk of late miscarriages. Seralini
and his team decided to research the effects of the herbicide on
human placenta cells. Their study confirmed the toxicity of
glyphosate, as after eighteen hours of exposure at low
concentrations, large proportions of human placenta began to
die. Seralini suggests that this may explain the high levels of
premature births and miscarriages observed among female farmers
using glyphosate.

Seraliniâs team further compared the toxic effects of the
Roundup formula (the most common commercial formulation of
glyphosate and chemical additives) to the isolated active
ingredient, glyphosate. They found that the toxic effect
increases in the presence of Roundup âadjuvantsâ or additives.
These additives thus have a facilitating role, rendering Roundup
twice as toxic as its isolated active ingredient, glyphosate.

Another study, released in April 2005 by the University of
Pittsburgh, suggests that Roundup is a danger to other
life-forms and non-target organisms. Biologist Rick Relyea found
that Roundup is extremely lethal to amphibians. In what is
considered one of the most extensive studies on the effects of
pesticides on nontarget organisms in a natural setting, Relyea
found that Roundup caused a 70 percent decline in amphibian
biodiversity and an 86 percent decline in the total mass of
tadpoles. Leopard frog tadpoles and gray tree frog tadpoles were
nearly eliminated.

In 2002, a scientific team led by Robert Belle of the
National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) biological
station in Roscoff, France showed that Roundup activates one of
the key stages of cellular division that can potentially lead to
cancer. Belle and his team have been studying the impact of
glyphosate formulations on sea urchin cells for several years.
The team has recently demonstrated in Toxicological Science
(December 2004) that a âcontrol pointâ for DNA damage was
affected by Roundup, while glyphosate alone had no effect. âWe
have shown that itâs a definite risk factor, but we have not
evaluated the number of cancers potentially induced, nor the
time frame within which they would declare themselves,â Belle
acknowledges.

There is, indeed, direct evidence that glyphosate inhibits an
important process called RNA transcription in animals, at a
concentration well below the level that is recommended for
commercial spray application.

There is also new research that shows that brief exposure to
commercial glyphosate causes liver damage in rats, as indicated
by the leakage of intracellular liver enzymes. The research
indicates that glyphosate and its surfactant in Roundup were
found to act in synergy to increase damage to the liver.

UPDATE BY CHEE YOKE HEONG
Roundup Ready weedkiller is one of the most widely used
weedkillers in the world for crops and backyard gardens.
Roundup, with its active ingredient glyphosate, has long been
promoted as safe for humans and the environment while effective
in killing weeds. It is therefore significant when recent
studies show that Roundup is not as safe as its promoters claim.

This has major consequences as the bulk of commercially
planted genetically modified crops are designed to tolerate
glyphosate (and especially Roundup), and independent field data
already shows a trend of increasing use of the herbicide. This
goes against industry claims that herbicide use will drop and
that these plants will thus be more âenvironment-friendly.â Now
it has been found that there are serious health effects, too. My
story therefore aimed to highlight these new findings and their
implications to health and the environment.

Not surprisingly, Monsanto came out refuting some of the
findings of the studies mentioned in the article. What ensued
was an open exchange between Dr. Rick Relyea and Monsanto,
whereby the former stood his grounds. Otherwise, to my
knowledge, no studies have since emerged on Roundup.

Halliburtonâs subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and
Root) announced on January 24, 2006 that it had been awarded a
$385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland
Security to build detention camps in the United States.

According to a press release posted on the Halliburton
website, âThe contract, which is effective immediately, provides
for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities
to augment existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the
event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to
support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency
support contract provides for planning and, if required,
initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics
support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more
expansion facilities.â

What little coverage the announcement received focused on
concerns about Halliburtonâs reputation for overcharging U.S.
taxpayers for substandard services.

Less attention was focused on the phrase ârapid development
of new programsâ or what type of programs might require a major
expansion of detention centers, capable of holding 5,000 people
each. Jamie Zuieback, spokeswoman for ICE, declined to elaborate
on what these ânew programsâ might be.

Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott,
Maureen Farrell, and Nat Parry have explored what the Bush
administration might actually have in mind.

Scott speculates that the âdetention centers could be used to
detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to
declare martial law.â He recalled that during the Reagan
administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North
organized the Rex-84 âreadiness exercise,â which contemplated
the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and
detaining 400,000 ârefugeesâ in the event of âuncontrolled
population movementsâ over the Mexican border into the U.S.

Northâs exercise, which reportedly contemplated possible
suspension of the Constitution, led to a line of questioning
during the Iran-Contra Hearings concerning the idea that plans
for expanded internment and detention facilities would not be
confined to ârefugeesâ alone.

It is relevant, says Scott, that in 2002 Attorney General
John Ashcroft announced his desire to see camps for U.S.
citizens deemed to be âenemy combatants.â On February 17, 2006,
in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of the harm being done to the
countryâs security, not just by the enemy, but also by what he
called ânews informersâ who needed to be combated in âa contest
of wills.â

Since September 11 the Bush administration has implemented a
number of interrelated programs that were planned in the 1980s
under President Reagan. Continuity of Government (COG)
proposalsâa classified plan for keeping a secret
âgovernment-within-the-governmentâ running during and after a
nuclear disasterâincluded vastly expanded detention
capabilities, warrantless eavesdropping, and preparations for
greater use of martial law.

Scott points out that, while Oliver North represented a
minority element in the Reagan administration, which soon
distanced itself from both the man and his proposals, the
minority associated with COG planning, which included Cheney and
Rumsfeld, appear to be in control of the U.S. government today.

Farrell speculates that, because another terror attack is all
but certain, it seems far more likely that the detention centers
would be used for post-September 11-type detentions of
rounded-up immigrants rather than for a sudden deluge of
immigrants flooding across the border.

Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg ventures, âAlmost
certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next
September 11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly
dissenters. Theyâve already done this on a smaller scale, with
the âspecial registrationâ detentions of immigrant men from
Muslim countries, and with GuantĂĄnamo.â

Parry notes that The Washington Post reported on February 15,
2006 that the National Counterterrorism Centerâs (NCTC) central
repository holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a
fourfold increase since fall of 2003.
Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through
the NSAâs domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told
the Post, âOur database includes names of known and suspected
international terrorists provided by all intelligence community
organizations, including NSA.â

As the administration scoops up more and more names, members
of Congress have questioned the elasticity of Bushâs definitions
for words like terrorist âaffiliates,â used to justify
wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or
entities.

A Defense Department document, entitled the âStrategy for
Homeland Defense and Civil Support,â has set out a military
strategy against terrorism that envisions an âactive, layered
defenseâ both inside and outside U.S. territory. In the
document, the Pentagon pledges to âtransform U.S. military
forces to execute homeland defense missions in the . . . U.S.
homeland.â The strategy calls for increased military
reconnaissance and surveillance to âdefeat potential challengers
before they threaten the United States.â The plan âmaximizes
threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would
harm us.â

But there are concerns, warns Parry, over how the Pentagon
judges âthreatsâ and who falls under the category of âthose who
would harm us.â A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence
Field Activityâs TALON program has amassed files on antiwar
protesters.

In the view of some civil libertarians, a form of martial law
already exists in the U.S. and has been in place since shortly
after the September 11 attacks when Bush issued Military Order
Number One, which empowered him to detain any noncitizen as an
international terrorist or enemy combatant. Today that order
extends to U.S. citizens as well.

Farrell ends her article with the conclusion that while much
speculation has been generated by KBRâs contract to build huge
detention centers within the U.S., âThe truth is, we wonât know
the real purpose of these centers unless âcontingency plans are
needed.â And by then, it will be too late.â

UPDATE BY PETER DALE SCOTT
The contract of the Halliburton subsidiary KBR to build
immigrant detention facilities is part of a longer-term Homeland
Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal
of âall removable aliensâ and âpotential terrorists.â In the
1980s Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld discussed similar
emergency detention powers as part of a super-secret program of
planning for what was euphemistically called âContinuity of
Governmentâ (COG) in the event of a nuclear disaster. At the
time, Cheney was a Wyoming congressman, while Rumsfeld, who had
been defense secretary under President Ford, was a businessman
and CEO of the drug company G.D. Searle.

These men planned for suspension of the Constitution, not
just after nuclear attack, but for any ânational security
emergency,â which they defined in Executive Order 12656 of 1988
as: âAny occurrence, including natural disaster, military
attack, technological or other emergency, that seriously
degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the
United States.â Clearly September 11 would meet this definition,
and did, for COG was instituted on that day. As the Washington
Post later explained, the order âdispatched a shadow government
of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work secretly
outside Washington, activating for the first time long-standing
plans.â

What these managers in this shadow government worked on has
never been reported. But it is significant that the group that
prepared ENDGAME was, as the Homeland Security document puts it,
âchartered in September 2001.â For ENDGAMEâs goal of a capacious
detention capability is remarkably similar to Oliver Northâs
controversial Rex-84 âreadiness exerciseâ for COG in 1984. This
called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to
round up and detain 400,000 imaginary ârefugees,â in the context
of âuncontrolled population movementsâ over the Mexican border
into the United States.

UPDATE BY MAUREEN FARRELL
When the story about Kellogg, Brown and Rootâs contract for
emergency detention centers broke, immigration was not the hot
button issue it is today. Given this, the language in
Halliburtonâs press release, stating that the centers would be
built in the event of an âemergency influx of immigrants into
the U.S.,â raised eyebrows, especially among those familiar with
Rex-84 and other Reagan-era initiatives. FEMAâs former plans
âfor the detention of at least 21 million American Negroes in
assembly centers or relocation campsâ added to the distrust, and
the second stated reason for the KBR contract, âto support the
rapid development of new programs,â sent imaginations reeling.

While few in the mainstream media made the connection between
KBRâs contract and previous programs, Fox News eventually
addressed this issue, pooh-poohing concerns as the province of
âconspiracy theoriesâ and âunfoundedâ fears. My article
attempted to sift through the speculation, focusing on
verifiable information found in declassified and leaked
documents which proved that, in addition to drawing up
contingency plans for martial law, the government has conducted
military readiness exercises designed to round up and detain
both illegal aliens and U.S. citizens.
How concerned should Americans be? Recent reports are
conflicting and confusing:

In May, 2006, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) began âOperation Return to Sender,â which involved
catching illegal immigrants and deporting them. In June,
however, President Bush vowed that there would soon be ânew
infrastructuresâ including detention centers designed to put
an end to such âcatch and releaseâ practices.

Though Bush said he was âworking with Congress to
increase the number of detention facilities along our
borders,â Rep. Bennie Thompson, ranking member of the House
Homeland Security Committee, said he first learned about the
KBR contract through newspaper reports.

Fox News recently quoted Pepperdine University professor
Doug Kmiec, who deemed detention camp concerns âmore
paranoia than realityâ and added that KBRâs contract is most
likely âsomething related to (Hurricane) Katrinaâ or âa bird
flu outbreak that could spur a mass quarantine of
Americans.â The presidentâs stated desire for the U.S.
military to take a more active role during natural disasters
and to enforce quarantines in the event of a bird flu
outbreak, however, have been roundly denounced.

Concern over an all-powerful federal government is not
paranoia, but active citizenship. As Thomas Jefferson explained,
âeven under the best forms of government, those entrusted with
power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into
tyranny.â From John Adamsâs Alien and Sedition Acts to FDRâs
internment of Japanese Americans, the land of the free has held
many contradictions and ironies. Interestingly enough,
Halliburton was at the center of another historical controversy,
when Lyndon Johnsonâs ties to a little-known company named
Kellogg, Brown and Root caused a congressional
commotionâparticularly after the Halliburton subsidiary won
enough wartime contracts to become one of the first protested
symbols of the military-industrial complex. Back then they were
known as the âVietnam builders.â The question, of course, is
what theyâll be known as next.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) research
program is increasingly relying on corporate joint ventures,
according to agency documents obtained by Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The American Chemical
Council (ACC) is now EPAâs leading research partner and the EPA
is diverting funds from basic health and environmental research
towards research that addresses regulatory concerns of corporate
funders.

Since the beginning of Bushâs first term in office, there has
been a significant increase in cooperative research and
development agreements (CRADAs) with individual corporations or
industry associations. During Bushâs first four years EPA
entered into fifty-seven corporate CRADAs, compared to
thirty-four such agreements during Clintonâs second term.

EPA scientists claim that corporations are influencing the
agencyâs research agenda through financial inducements. One EPA
scientist wrote, âMany of us in the labs feel like we work for
contracts.â In April 2005, EPAâs Science Advisory Board warned
that the agency was no longer funding credible public health
research. It noted, for example, that the EPA was falling behind
on issues such as intercontinental pollution transport and
nanotechnology.

Furthermore, in April 2005, a study by the Government
Accountability Office concluded that EPA lacks safeguards to
âevaluate or manage potential conflicts of interestâ in
corporate research agreements, as they are taking money from
companies and corporations that they are supposed to be
regulating.

According to Rebecca Rose, the Program Director of PEER,
âUnder its current leadership, EPA is becoming an arm of
corporate R&D.â She also notes that the number of corporate
CRADAs under the Bush administration outnumbered those entered
into with universities or local governments, adding, âPublic
health research needs should not have to depend upon corporate
underwriting.â

In October 2005 President Bush nominated George Gray to serve
as the Assistant Administrator for the Environmental Protection
Agency Office of Research and Development (ORD). At that time
George Gray ran a Center for Risk Analysis at Harvard University
where the majority of the funding came from corporate sources.
Gray indicated upon nomination that he intends to continue and
expand his solicitation of corporate research funds in his
position with ORD.
PEERâs Executive Director Jeff Ruch warns, âInjecting outside
money into a public agency research program, especially when it
is tied to particular projects, has a subtle but undeniable
influence on not only what work gets done but also how that work
is reported.â He adds, âAs what was one of the top public health
research programs slides toward dysfunction, nothing about the
background, attitude or philosophy of Mr. Gray suggests that he
is even remotely the right person for this job.â

In 2004 & 2005, EPA was plagued by reports of political
suppression of scientific results on important health issues
such as asbestos and mercury regulation (see Censored 2005,
Story #3). In response ORD launched a public relations campaign,
entitled âScience for You,â using agency research funds to clean
up its image.

Comments: George M. Gray was sworn in as the
Assistant Administrator of Research and Development at EPA on
November 1, 2005, with unanimous consent of the U.S. Senate.

UPDATE BY JEFF RUCH
This story illustrates how key environmental research is being
diverted away from public health priorities in order to meet a
corporate regulatory agenda. By enticing EPA into partnerships,
entities such as the American Chemical Council (ACC), which is
now EPAâs leading research partner, can influence not only what
EPA researches but how that research is conducted, as well.

For example, long-term health monitoring studies drop off
EPAâs list of priority topics because industry has no interest
in funding such vital workâif anything, industry has an
incentive to prevent such research from being conducted. By the
same token, the industry push to allow human subject experiments
to test tolerance to pesticides and other commercial poisons is
precisely the type of research the industry desires to entice
EPA into conducting, and thus legitimizing, despite an array of
unresolved ethical problems.

A few updates since October 2005 worthy of note: a) A leading
proponent of industry research partnerships, George Gray, has
been confirmed as EPA Assistant Administrator for Research &
Development. b) President Bush has proposed further cuts to
EPAâs already shrinking research budget. (see http://www.peer.org/news/ news_id.php?row_id=661). This
growing penury makes EPA even more interested in using corporate
dollars to supplement its tattered research program. c) EPA is
in the first weeks of its human testing program. A specially
convened Human Subjects Review Board is now struggling to
approve industry and agency studies in which people were not
given informed consent or were given harmful doses of chemicals.

The EPA page of our website has several updates on this and
related issues.

Ecuador and Mexico have refused to sign bilateral immunity
agreements (BIA) with the U.S., in ratification of the
International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty. Despite the Bush
administrationâs threat to withhold economic aid, both countries
confirmed allegiance to the ICC, the international body
established to try individuals accused of war crimes and crimes
against humanity.

On June 22, 2005 Ecuadorâs president, Alfredo Palacios,
vocalized emphatic refusal to sign a BIA (also known as an
Article 98 agreement to the Rome Statute of the ICC) in spite of
Washingtonâs threat to withhold $70 million a year in military
aid.

Mexico, having signed the Rome Statute, which established the
ICC in 2000, formally ratified the treaty on October 28, 2005,
making it the 100th nation to join the ICC. As a consequence of
ratifying the ICC without a U.S. immunity agreement, Mexico
stands to lose millions of dollars in U.S. aidâincluding $11.5
million to fight drug trafficking.
On September 29, 2005 the U.S. State Department reported that it
had secured 100 âimmunity agreements,â although less than a
third have been ratified.

âOur ultimate goal is to conclude Article 98 agreements with
every country in the world, regardless of whether they have
signed or ratified the ICC, regardless of whether they intend to
in the future,â said John Bolton, former U.S. Undersecretary for
Arms Control and current U.S. ambassador to the United
Nationsâand one of the ICCâs staunchest opponents.

The U.S. effort to undermine the ICC was given teeth in 2002,
when the U.S. Congress adopted the American Servicemembersâ
Protection Act (ASPA), which contains provisions restricting
U.S. cooperation with the ICC by making U.S. support of UN
peacekeeping missions largely contingent on achieving impunity
for all U.S. personnel.
The ASPA prohibits U.S. military assistance to ICC member states
that have not signed a BIA.

Legislation far more wide-reaching, however, was signed into
law by President Bush on December 2004. The Nethercutt Amendment
authorizes the loss of Economic Support Funds (ESF) to
countries, including many key U.S. allies, that have not signed
a BIA. Threatened under the Nethercutt Amendment are: funds for
international security and counterterrorism efforts, peace
process programs, antidrug-trafficking initiatives, truth and
reconciliation commissions, wheelchair distribution, human
rights programs, economic and democratic development, and
HIV/Aids education, among others. The Nethercutt Amendment was
readopted by the U.S. Congress in November 2005.1

In spite of severe U.S. pressure, fifty-three members of the
ICC have refused to sign BIAs.

Katherine Stapp asserts that if Washington follows through on
threats to slash aid to ICC member states, it risks further
alienating key U.S. allies and drawing attention to its own
increasingly shaky human rights record. âThere will be a price
to be paid by the U.S. government in terms of its credibility,â
Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watchâs International
Justice Program, told IPS.\But criticism of the administrationâs
hard line has also come from unlikely quarters.

Testifying before Congress in March, Gen. Bantz J. Craddock,
the commander of U.S. military forces in Latin America,
complained that the sanctions had excluded Latin American
officers from U.S. training programs and could allow China,
which has been seeking military ties with Latin America, to fill
the void.

âWe now risk losing contact and interoperability with a
generation of military classmates in many nations of the region,
including several leading countries,â Craddock told the Senate
Armed Services Committee.

Experts say it is particularly notable that Mexico, which
sells 88 percent of its exports in the U.S. market, is defying
pressure from Washington.

âItâs exactly because of the geographic and trade proximity
between Mexico and the United States that Mexicoâs ratification
takes on greater significance in terms of how isolated the U.S.
government is in its attitude toward the ICC,â Dicker told IPS.

Notes
1. âOverview of the United Statesâ Opposition to the
International Criminal Court,â http://www.iccnow.org.

UPDATE BY KATHERINE STAPP
As noted by Amnesty International, the United States is the only
nation in the world that is actively opposed to the
International Criminal Court (ICC). However, more and more
countries appear to be resisting pressure to exempt U.S.
nationals from the courtâs jurisdiction. Since the time of my
writing, the number of âbilateral immunity agreements,â or BIAs,
garnered by Washington has remained the same: 100, of which only
twenty-one have been ratified by parliaments, while another
eighteen are considered âexecutive agreementsâ that purportedly
do not require ratification. Only thirteen states parties to the
ICC (out of 100) have ratified BIAs with the United States,
while eight others have reportedly entered into executive
agreements. In the past two years, only four countries in Latin
America and the Caribbean have signed BIAs, also known as
Article 98 agreements.

Some key figures in the Bush administration have recently
expressed doubts about the wisdom of withholding aid from
friendly countries that refuse to sign. At a March 10 briefing,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice likened the BIAs to âsort of
the same as shooting ourselves in the foot . . . by having to
put off aid to countries with which we have important
counter-terrorism or counter-drug or in some cases, in some of
our allies, itâs even been cooperation in places like
Afghanistan and Iraq.â

Bantz Craddock, head of the U.S. Southern Command, remains a
vocal critic of the American Servicemembersâ Protection Act
(ASPA) sanctions, noting in testimony before the House Armed
Services Committee on March 16 that eleven Latin American
nations have now been barred under ASPA from receiving
International Military Education and Training funds. These
include Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Mexico.

âDecreasing engagement opens the door for competing nations
and outside political actors who may not share our democratic
principles to increase interaction and influence within the
region,â he noted.

And in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report published
on February 6, the Defense Department said it will consider
whether ASPA restrictions on âforeign assistance programs
pertaining to security and the war on terror necessitate
adjustment as we continue to advance the aims of the ASPA.â

Meanwhile, a May 11 poll by the University of Marylandâs
Program on International Policy Attitudes found that a
bipartisan majority of the U.S. public (69 percent) believes
that the U.S. should not be given special exceptions when it
becomes a party to human rights treaties. 60 percent explicitly
support U.S. participation in the ICC.

Mexico has stood firm in its refusal to sign a BIA, with the
Mexican Parliamentâs Lower Chamber stating that immunity is not
allowed under the Rome Statute that establishes the ICC. As a
result, $3.6 million in military aid has been frozen, and
further International Military Exchange Training aid cut to zero
in the administrationâs proposed 2007 budget request. The
country also stands to lose more than $11 million from the
Economic Support Fund (ESF).

Other countries currently threatened with aid cuts include
Bolivia, which could lose 96 percent of its U.S. military aid,
and Kenya, which could lose $8 million in ESF aid.

According to a report from journalist, Greg Palast, the U.S.
invasion of Iraq was indeed about the oil. However, it wasnât to
destroy OPEC, as claimed by neoconservatives in the
administration, but to take part in it.

The U.S. strategic occupation of Iraq has been an effective
means of acquiring access to the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC). As long as the interim government
adheres to the production caps set by the organization, the U.S.
will ensure profits to the international oil companies (IOCs),
the OPEC cartel, and Russia.

With the prolonged insurgency following the invasion, along
with internal corruption and pipeline destruction, hard line
neoconservative plans for a completely privatized Iraq were
dashed. According to some administration insiders, the idea of a
laissez-faire, free-market reconstruction of Iraq was never a
serious consideration. One oil industry consultant to Iraq told
Palast he was amused by âthe obsession of neoconservative
writers on ways to undermine OPEC.â

In December 2003, says Palast, the State Department drafted a
323-page plan entitled âOptions for Developing a Long Term
Sustainable Iraqi Oil Industry.â This plan directs the Iraqis to
maintain an oil quota system that will enhance its relationship
with OPEC. It describes several possible state-owned options
that range from the Saudi Aramco model (in which the government
owns the whole operation) to the Azerbaijan model (in which the
system is almost entirely operated by the International Oil
Companies).

Implementation of the plan was guided by a handful of oil
industry consultants, promoting an OPEC-friendly policy but
preferring the Azerbaijan model to the âself-financingâ system
of the Saudi Aramco, as it grants operation and control to the
foreign oil companies (the 2003 report warns Iraqis against
cutting into IOC profits). Once the contracts are granted, these
companies then manage, fund, and equip crude extraction in
exchange for a percentage of the sales. Given the way in which
the interests of OPEC and those of the IOCs are so closely
aligned, it is certainly understandable why smashing OPECâs oil
cartel might not appeal to certain elements of the Bush
administration.

According to the drafters and promoters of the plan,
dismantling OPEC would be a catastrophe. The last thing they
want is the privatization of Iraqâs oil fields and the specter
of competition maximizing production. Pumping more oil per day
than the OPEC regulated quota of almost 4 million, would quickly
bring down Iraqâs economy and compromise the U.S. position in
the global market.

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, profits have shot up for
oil companies. In 2004, the major U.S. oil companies posted
record or near record profits. In 2005 profits for the five
largest oil companies increased to $113 billion. In February
2006, ConocoPhillips reported a doubling of its quarterly
profits from the previous year, which itself had been a company
record. Shell posted a record breaking $4.48 billion in
fourth-quarter earningsâand in 2005, ExxonMobil reported the
largest one-year operating profit of any corporation in U.S.
history.

Research into the events of September 11 by Brigham Young
University physics professor, Steven E. Jones, concludes that
the official explanation for the collapse of the World Trade
Center (WTC) buildings is implausible according to laws of
physics. Jones is calling for an independent, international
scientific investigation âguided not by politicized notions and
constraints but rather by observations and calculations.â

In debunking the official explanation of the collapse of the
three WTC buildings, Jones cites the complete, rapid, and
symmetrical collapse of the buildings; the horizontal explosions
(squibs) evidenced in films of the collapses; the fact that the
antenna dropped first in the North Tower, suggesting the use of
explosives in the core columns; and the large pools of molten
metal observed in the basement areas of both towers.

Jones also investigated the collapse of WTC 7, a
forty-seven-story building that was not hit by planes, yet
dropped in its own âfootprint,â in the same manner as a
controlled demolition. WTC 7 housed the U.S. Secret Service, the
Department of Defense, the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the
Mayorâs Office of Emergency Management, the Internal Revenue
Service Regional Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Many of the records from the Enron accounting scandal were
destroyed when the building came down.

Jones claims that the National Institutes of Standards and
Technology (NIST) ignored the physics and chemistry of what
happened on September 11 and even manipulated its testing in
order to get a computer-generated hypothesis that fit the end
result of collapse, and did not even attempt to investigate the
possibility of controlled demolition. He also questions the
investigations conducted by FEMA and the 9/11 Commission.

Among the reportâs other findings:

No steel-frame building, before or after the WTC
buildings, has ever collapsed due to fire. But explosives
can effectively sever steel columns.

WTC 7, which was not hit by hijacked planes, collapsed
in 6.6 seconds, just .6 of a second longer than it would
take an object dropped from the roof to hit the ground.
âWhere is the delay that must be expected due to
conservation of momentum, one of the foundational laws of
physics?â Jones asks. âThat is, as upper-falling floors
strike lower floorsâand intact steel support columnsâthe
fall must be significantly impeded by the impacted mass.

How do the upper floors fall so quickly, then, and still
conserve momentum in the collapsing buildings?â The paradox,
he says, âis easily resolved by the explosive demolition
hypothesis, whereby explosives quickly removed lower-floor
material, including steel support columns, and allow near
free-fall-speed collapses.â These observations were not
analyzed by FEMA, NIST, or the 9/11 Commission.

With non-explosive-caused collapse there would typically
be a piling up of shattered concrete. But most of the
material in the towers was converted to flour-like powder
while the buildings were falling. âHow can we understand
this strange behavior, without explosives? Remarkable,
amazingâand demanding scrutiny since the U.S.
government-funded reports failed to analyze this
phenomenon."

Steel supports were âpartly evaporated,â but it would
require temperatures near 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit to
evaporate steelâand neither office materials nor diesel fuel
can generate temperatures that hot. Fires caused by jet fuel
from the hijacked planes lasted at most a few minutes, and
office material fires would burn out within about twenty
minutes in any given location.

Molten metal found in the debris of the WTC may have
been the result of a high-temperature reaction of a commonly
used explosive such as thermite. Buildings not felled by
explosives âhave insufficient directed energy to result in
melting of large quantities of metal,â Jones says.

Multiple loud explosions in rapid sequence were reported
by numerous observers in and near the towers, and these
explosions occurred far below the region where the planes
struck.

In January 2006 Jones, along with a group calling themselves
âScholars for 9/11 Truth,â called for an international
investigation into the attacks and are going so far as to accuse
the U.S. government of a massive cover-up.
âWe believe that senior government officials have covered up
crucial facts about what really happened on September 11,â the
group said in a statement. âWe believe these events may have
been orchestrated by the administration in order to manipulate
the American people into supporting policies at home and
abroad.â

The group is headed by Jones and Jim Fetzer, University of
Minnesota Duluth distinguished McKnight professor of philosophy,
and is made up of fifty academicians and experts including
Robert M. Bowman, former director of the U.S. âStar Warsâ space
defense program, and Morgan Reynolds, former chief economist for
the Department of Labor in President George W. Bushâs first
term.

New developments in satellite imaging technology reveal that
the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed twice as quickly as
previously estimated due to the surreptitious practice of
selective logging.

A survey published in the October 21 issue of the journal
Science is based on images made possible by a new,
ultra-high-resolution satellite-imaging technique developed by
scientists affiliated with the Carnegie Institution and Stanford
University.

âWith this new technology, we are able to detect openings in
the forest canopy down to just one or two individual trees,â
says Carnegie scientist Gregory Asner, lead author of the
Science study and assistant professor of Geological and
Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. âPeople have been
monitoring large-scale deforestation in the Amazon with
satellites for more than two decades, but selective logging has
been mostly invisible until now.â While clear-cuts and burn-offs
are readily detectable by conventional satellite analysis,
selective logging is masked by the Amazonâs extremely dense
forest canopy.

Stanford Universityâs website reports that by late 2004, the
Carnegie research team had refined its imaging technique into a
sophisticated remote-sensing technology called the Carnegie
Landsat Analysis System (CLAS), which processes data from three
NASA satellitesâLandsat 7, Terra and Earth Observing 1âthrough a
powerful supercomputer equipped with new pattern-recognition
approaches designed by Asner and his staff.1

âEach pixel of information obtained by the satellites
contains detailed spectral data about the forest,â Asner
explains. âFor example, the signals tell us how much green
vegetation is in the canopy, how much dead material is on the
forest floor and how much bare soil there is.â

For the Science study, the researchers conducted their first
basin-wide analysis of the Amazon from 1999 to 2002. The results
of the four-year survey revealed a problem that is widespread
and vastly underestimated, âWe found much more selective logging
than we or anyone else had expectedâbetween 4,600 and 8,000
square miles every year of forest spread across five Brazilian
states,â Asner said.

Selective loggingâthe practice of removing one or two trees
and leaving the rest intactâ is often considered a sustainable
alternative to clear-cutting. Left unregulated, however, the
practice has proven to be extremely destructive.
A large mahogany tree can fetch hundreds of dollars at the
sawmill, making it a tempting target in a country where one in
five lives in poverty. âPeople go in and remove just the
merchantable species from the forest,â Asner says. âMahogany is
the one everybody knows about, but in the Amazon, there are at
least thirty-five marketable hardwood species, and the damage
that occurs from taking out just a few trees at a time is
enormous. On average, for every tree removed, up to thirty more
can be severely damaged by the timber harvesting operation
itself. Thatâs because when trees are cut down, the vines that
connect them pull down the neighboring trees.

âLogged forests are areas of extraordinary damage. A tree
crown can be twenty-five meters. When you knock down a tree it
causes a lot of damage in the understory.â Light penetrates to
the understory and dries out the forest floor, making it much
more susceptible to burning. âThatâs probably the biggest
environmental concern,â Asner explains. âBut selective logging
also involves the use of tractors and skidders that rip up the
soil and the forest floor. Loggers also build makeshift dirt
roads to get in, and study after study has shown that those
frontier roads become larger and larger as more people move in,
and that feeds the deforestation process. Think of logging as
the first land-use change.â

Another serious environmental concern is that while an
estimated 400 million tons of carbon enter the atmosphere every
year as a result of traditional deforestation in the Amazon,
Asner and his colleagues estimate that an additional 100 million
tons is produced by selective logging. âThat means up to 25
percent more greenhouse gas is entering the atmosphere than was
previously assumed,â Asner explains, a finding that could alter
climate change forecasts on a global scale.

#20 Bottled Water: A Global Environmental Problem

Consumers spend a collective $100 billion every year on
bottled water in the beliefâoften mistakenâthat it is better for
us than what flows from our taps. Worldwide, bottled water
consumption surged to 41 billion gallons in 2004, up 57 percent
since 1999.

âEven in areas where tap water is safe to drink, demand for
bottled water is increasingâproducing unnecessary garbage and
consuming vast quantities of energy,â reports Earth Policy
Institute researcher Emily Arnold. Although in much of the
world, including Europe and the U.S., more regulations govern
the quality of tap water than bottled water, bottled water can
cost up to 10,000 times more. At up to $10 per gallon, bottled
water costs more than gasoline in the United States.
âThere is no question that clean, affordable drinking water is
essential to the health of our global community,â Arnold
asserts, âBut bottled water is not the answer in the developed
world, nor does it solve problems for the 1.1 billion people who
lack a secure water supply. Improving and expanding existing
water treatment and sanitation systems is more likely to provide
safe and sustainable sources of water over the long term.â
Members of the United Nations have agreed to halve the
proportion of people who lack reliable and lasting access to
safe drinking water by the year 2015. To meet this goal, they
would have to double the $15 billion spent every year on water
supply and sanitation. While this amount may seem large, it
pales in comparison to the estimated $100 billion spent each
year on bottled water.

Tap water comes to us through an energy-efficient
infrastructure whereas bottled water is transported long
distancesâoften across national bordersâby boat, train,
airplane, and truck. This involves burning massive quantities of
fossil fuels.

For example, in 2004 alone a Helsinki company shipped 1.4
million bottles of Finnish tap water 2,700 miles to Saudi
Arabia. And although 94 percent of the bottled water sold in the
U.S. is produced domestically, many Americans import water
shipped some 9,000 kilometers from Fiji and other faraway places
to satisfy demand for what Arnold terms âchic and exotic bottled
water.â

More fossil fuels are used in packaging the water. Most water
bottles are made with polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic
derived from crude oil. âMaking bottles to meet Americansâ
demand alone requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil
annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year,â
Arnold notes.

Once it has been emptied, the bottle must be dumped.
According to the Container Recycling Institute, 86 percent of
plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage
or litter. Incinerating used bottles produces toxic byproducts
such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals tied to a
host of human and animal health problems. Buried water bottles
can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.

Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to
bottle water each year. Of the bottles deposited for recycling
in 2004, the U.S. exported roughly 40 percent to destinations as
far away as China, requiring yet more fossil fuel.
Meanwhile, communities where the water originates risk their
sources running dry. More than fifty Indian villages have
complained of water shortages after bottlers began extracting
water for sale under the Coca-Cola Corporationâs Dasani label.
Similar problems have been reported in Texas and in the Great
Lakes region of North America, where farmers, fishers, and
others who depend on water for their livelihoods are suffering
from concentrated water extraction as water tables drop quickly.

While Americans consume the most bottled water per capita,
some of the fastest collective growth in consumption is in the
giant populations of Mexico, India, and China. As a whole,
Indiaâs consumption of bottled water increased threefold from
1999 to 2004, while Chinaâs more than doubled.

While private companiesâ profits rise from selling bottled
water of questionable quality at more than $100 billion per
yearâmore efficiently regulated, waste-free municipal systems
could be implemented for distribution of safe drinking water for
all the peoples of the worldâat a small fraction of the price.

UPDATE BY ABID ASLAM
Consumer stories are a staple of the media diet. This article
spawned coverage by numerous public broadcasters and appeared to
do the rounds in cyberspace. Perhaps what seized imaginations
was our affinity for the subject: apparently we and our planetâs
surface are made up mostly of water and without it, we would
perish. In any case, most of the discussion of the issues raised
by the sourceâa research paper from a Washington, D.C.âbased
environmental think tankâfocused mainly on consumer elements
(the price, taste, and consequences for human health of bottled
and tap water), as I had anticipated when I decided to storify
the Environmental Policy Institute (EPI) paper (in honesty, that
is pretty much all I did, adding minimal context and
background). However, a good deal of reader attention also
focused on the environmental and regulatory aspects.

Further information on these can be obtained from the EPI, a
host of environmental and consumer groups, and from the relevant
government agencies: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
for tap water and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for
bottled water.

Differences in the ways these regulators (indeed, regulators
in general) operate and are structured and funded deserve a
great deal more attention, as does the unequal protection of
citizens that results.

Numerous other questions raised in the article deserve
further examination. Would improved waste disposal and recycling
address the researcherâs concerns about resources being consumed
to get rid of empty water bottles? If public water systems can
deliver a more reliable product to more people at a lower cost,
as the EPI paper says, then what are the obstacles to the
necessary investment in the U.S. and in poor countries, and how
can citizens here and there overcome those obstacles?

Some of these questions may strike general readers or certain
media gatekeepers as esoteric. Then again, we all drink the
stuff.

Barrick Gold, a powerful multinational gold mining company,
planned to melt three Andean glaciers in order to access gold
deposits through open pit mining. The water from the glaciers
would have been held for refreezing in the following winters.
Opposition to the mine because of destruction to water sources
for Andean farmers was widespread in Chile and the rest of the
world. Barrick Goldâs Pascua Lama project represents one of the
largest foreign investments in Chile in recent years, totaling
$1.5 billion. However, some 70,000 downstream farmers backed by
international environmental organizations and activists around
the world waged a campaign against the proposed mine.

In the fall of 2005, environmental activists dumped crushed
ice outside the local headquarter of Barrick Gold in Santiago.
Thousands had marched earlier in the year shouting slogans such
as, âWe are not a North American colony,â and handing out
nuggets of foolâs gold emblazoned with the words oro
sucioââdirty gold.â

In February 2006, Chileâs Regional Environment Commission
(COREMA) gave permission for Barrick Gold to begin the project,
but did not approve the relocation of the three glaciers.

âThe mine will cause severe damage to the local ecosystem
because it will pollute the Huasco River as well as underground
water sources,â said Antonia Fortt, an environmental engineer
with the Oceana Ecological Organization.
The Pascua Lama deposits are considered one of the worldâs
largest untapped sources of gold ore, with a potential yield of
17.5 billion ounces of gold. Barrickâs removal of the gold will
employ cyanide leaching for on-site processing of the ore.
Cyanide is a chemical compound that is extremely toxic to humans
and other life forms. Environmentalists are worried that the
cyanide will leach into the water systems and contaminate entire
ecosystems downstream. Construction of the mine will begin in
2006 and begin full operations in 2009.

Barrick Gold also succeeded in convincing both the Chilean
and Argentine governments to sign a binational mining treaty,
which allows the unrestricted flow of machinery, ore, and
personnel across the border. Lawsuits against the treaty are
pending in Chilean courts.

Barrick Gold has been accused of burying fifty miners alive
in Tanzania and blatantly disregarding environmental concerns in
operations all over he world. George H. W. Bush, from 1995 to
1999, was the âHonorary Chairmanâ of Barrickâs international
Advisory Board.

Barrick Gold is the third largest gold mining company in the
world, with a portfolio of twenty-seven mining operations in
five continents. Gold sales in 2005 were $2.3 billion.

More than $8 billion in Homeland Security funds has been
doled out to states since the September 11, 2001 attacks, but
the public has little chance of knowing how this money is being
spent.

Of the thirty-four states that responded to Congressional
Quarterlyâs inquiries on Homeland Security spending, twelve have
laws or policies that preclude public disclosure of details on
Homeland Security purchases. Many states have adopted relevant
nondisclosure clauses to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The reason, state officials say, is that the information could
be useful to terrorists.

Further hindering public demand for accountability,
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Marc Short
confirms, DHS will not release its records on state spending of
funds.

âThese non-disclosure policies are troubling,â Steven
Aftergood, director of the research organization Project on
Government Secrecy, warns in an interview with CQ.
âAccountability is the price we pay. Weâre giving away the
ability to hold public officials accountable. More than we value
public oversight, we fear a nebulous terrorist threat, and this
is changing the character of American political life.â

New York is one of many states that will disclose broad
categories of purchases, such as personal protective gear, but
will not specify type of equipment, which company makes it, how
much it costs, or where it is going.
Roger Shatzkin, CQâs interviewee on the subject of New Jerseyâs
policy on Homeland Security spending disclosure, offered this
example: âIf there was a potential flaw in equipment, that could
be exploited [by terrorists], so the state would not want that
information to become public.â

Aftergood counters that taxpayers have the right to know if
law enforcement is using defective equipment: âOne of the things
that happens when you restrict information is that you reduce
the motivation to fix problems and correct weaknesses.â

Coloradoâs secrecy provision was enacted in 2003, but State
Senator Bob Hagedorn says the law has been misinterpreted,
authorizing automatic denial of access to any and all
information regarding Homeland Security. Hagedorn told CQ that
this broad application had never been his intention when
sponsoring the bill. He warned against the shroud of secrecy as,
in early 2005, state lawmakers discovered that Colorado did not
have a Homeland Security plan, yet had spent $130 million in
Homeland Security funds. âHow the hell do you spend $130 million
for homeland security when you donât have a damn plan?â Hagedorn
asked. âAt this point, the public still does not have an
official answer to that question,â he added.

CQ investigators confirm that federal lawmakers want to know
more about how states are spending Homeland Security funds.

âThereâs a delicate balance that needs to be struck between
ensuring our security and not advertising our vulnerabilities,
but also ensuring how our security money is being spent,â said a
staff member for the House Homeland Security Committee who
requested anonymity. âWeâre spending billions of dollars every
year on grants to state and local governments . . . there should
be some expectation [of] accountability.â

Lobbyists funded by the U.S. oil industry have launched a
campaign in Europe aimed at derailing efforts to tackle
greenhouse gas pollution and climate change.

Documents obtained by Greenpeace reveal a systematic plan to
persuade European business, politicians and the media that the
European Union should abandon its commitments under the Kyoto
protocol, the international agreement that aims to reduce
emissions that lead to global warming.

The documents, an email and a PowerPoint presentation,
describe efforts to establish a European coalition to âchallenge
the course of the EUâs post-2012 agenda.â They were written by
Chris Horner, a Washington D.C. lawyer and senior fellow at the
rightwing think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which
has received more than $1.3 million funding from the U.S. oil
giant ExxonMobil. Horner also acts for the Cooler Heads
Coalition, a group set up âto dispel the myth of global
warming.â

The PowerPoint document sets out plans to establish a group
called the European Sound Climate Policy Coalition. It says: âIn
the U.S. an informal coalition has helped successfully to avert
adoption of a Kyoto-style program. This model should be
emulated, as appropriate, to guide similar efforts in Europe.â

During the 1990s U.S. oil companies and other corporations
funded a group called the Global Climate Coalition, which
emphasized uncertainties in climate science and disputed the
need to take action. It was disbanded when President Bush pulled
the U.S. out of the Kyoto process. The groupâs website now says:
âThe industry voice on climate change has served its purpose by
contributing to a new national approach to global warming.â

Countries signed up to the Kyoto process have legal
commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Oil and energy
companies would be affected by these cuts because burning their
products produces the most emissions.

The PowerPoint document written by Horner appears to be aimed
at getting RWE, the German utility company, to join a European
coalition of companies to act against Kyoto. Horner is convinced
that, with Europeâs weakening economy, companies are likely to
be increasingly ill at ease with the costs of meeting Kyoto
mandates and thus could be successfully influenced to pressure
their government to reject Kyoto standards, as the U.S.
government has. Hornerâs audiences have included several
significant companies including Ford Europe, Lufthansa, and
Exxon.

The document says: âThe current political realities in
Brussels open a window of opportunity to challenge the course of
the EUâs post-2012 agenda.â It adds: âBrussels must openly
acknowledge and address them willingly or through third party
pressure.â

It says industry associations are the âwrong way to do thisâ
but suggests that a cross-industry coalition, of up to six
companies, could âcounter the commissionâs Kyoto agenda.â Such a
coalition are advised to steer debate by targeting journalists
and bloggers, as well as attending environmental group meetings
and events to âshare information on opposing viewpoints and
tactics.â

Vice President Dick Cheneyâs stock options in Halliburton
rose from $241,498 in 2004 to over $8 million in 2005, an
increase of more than 3,000 percent, as Halliburton continues to
rake in billions of dollars from no-bid/no-audit government
contracts.

An analysis released by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
reveals that as Halliburtonâs fortunes rise, so do the Vice
Presidentâs. Halliburton has already taken more than $10 billion
from the Bush-Cheney administration for work in Iraq. They were
also awarded many of the unaccountable post-Katrina government
contracts, as off-shore subsidiaries of Halliburton quietly
worked around U.S. sanctions to conduct very questionable
business with Iran (See Story #2). âIt is unseemly,â notes
Lautenberg, âfor the Vice President to continue to benefit from
this company at the same time his administration funnels
billions of dollars to it.â

According to the Vice Presidentâs Federal Financial
Disclosure forms, he holds the following Halliburton stock
options:

The Vice President has attempted to fend off criticism by
signing an agreement to donate the after-tax profits from these
stock options to charities of his choice, and his lawyer has
said he will not take any tax deduction for the donations.
However, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) concluded in
September 2003 that holding stock options while in elective
office does constitute a âfinancial interestâ regardless of
whether the holder of the options will donate proceeds to
charities. Valued at over $9 million, the Vice President could
exercise his stock options for a substantial windfall, not only
benefiting his designated charities, but also providing
Halliburton with a tax deduction.

CRS also found that receiving deferred compensation is a
financial interest. The Vice President continues to receive
deferred salary from Halliburton. While in office, he has
received the following salary payments from Halliburton:

Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice President Cheney
in 2001: $205,298
Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice President Cheney in
2002: $162,392
Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice President Cheney in
2003: $178,437
Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice President Cheney in
2004: $194,852

These CRS findings contradict Vice President Cheneyâs
puzzling view that he does not have a financial interest in
Halliburton. On the September 14, 2003 edition of Meet the Press
in response to questions regarding his relationship with
Halliburton, where from 1995 to 2000 he was employed as CEO,
Vice President Cheney said, âSince I left Halliburton to become
George Bushâs vice president, Iâve severed all my ties with the
company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no
financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and havenât had,
now, for over three years.â

Comment: A similar undercovered story of conflicting interest
and disaster profiteering by those in the top echelon of the
U.S. Government is of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeldâs
connections to Gilead Sciences, the biotech company that owns
the rights to Tamifluâthe influenza remedy that is now the
most-sought after drug in the world. This story was brought
forward by Fortune senior writer, Nelson D. Schwartz, on October
31, 2005 in an article titled âRumsfeldâs growing stake in
Tamiflu,â and by F. William Engdahl for GlobalResearch, on
October 30, 2005, in an article titled âIs avian flu another
Pentagon hoax?â

Rumsfeld served as Gileadâs chairman from 1997 until he
joined the Bush administration in 2001, and he still holds a
Gilead stake valued at between $5 million and $25 million,
according to Federal Financial Disclosures filed by Rumsfeld.
The forms donât reveal the exact number of shares Rumsfeld owns,
but whipped up fears of an avian flu pandemic and the ensuing
scramble for Tamiflu sent Gileadâs stock from $35 to $47 in
2005, making the Pentagon chief, already one of the wealthiest
members of the Bush cabinet, at least $1 million richer.

Whatâs more, the federal government is emerging as one of the
worldâs biggest customers for Tamiflu. In July 2005, the
Pentagon ordered $58 million worth of the treatment for U.S.
troops around the world, and Congress is considering a
multibillion dollar purchase. Roche expects 2005 sales for
Tamiflu to total at about $1 billion, compared with $258 million
in 2004.

UPDATE BY JOHN BYRNE
The media has routinely downplayed Cheneyâs involvement and
financial investment in Halliburton, one of the largest U.S.
defense contractors that received supersized no-bid contracts in
Iraq. Ultimately, the importance of the story is that the Vice
President of the U.S. is able to use his position of power to
reap rewards for his former company in which he has a financial
investment. Halliburton may also benefit from a chilling effect
in which the Pentagon is more likely to favor Cheneyâs firm to
seek favor with the White House.

Cheney continues to hold 433,333 Halliburton stock options,
and receives a deferred salary of about $200,000 a year.
According to Cheneyâs most recent tax returns, he held $2.5
million in retirement accounts, much of which likely came from
his former defense firm.

Cheney recently filed disclosure reports that show he is
valued at $94 million.

Senator Lautenbergâs disclosure, brought forward by Raw
Story, received no mainstream coverage. While the press has
often noted that Cheney was formerly Halliburtonâs CEO, they
routinely fail to mention how much money he accrued from the
firm during his service there. They also fail to mention that he
continues to receive a pension.

RawStory.com regularly reports on Halliburton and contracts
awarded to the company. SourceWatch.org also has a good library
of resources on Halliburton and other defense contractors as
well as the Vice President.Another way to get involved is to
contact your local senator or representatives about your
concerns, and to ask them to push the Vice President to sell his
stock options in Halliburton.

#25 US Military in Paraguay Threatens Region

Sources:
Upside Down World, October 5, 2005
Title: âFears mount as US opens new military installation in
Paraguayâ
Author: Benjamin Dangl

Five hundred U.S. troops arrived in Paraguay with planes,
weapons, and ammunition in July 2005, shortly after the
Paraguayan Senate granted U.S. troops immunity from national and
International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction. Neighboring
countries and human rights organizations are concerned that the
massive air base at Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay is potential
real estate for the U.S. military.

While U.S. and Paraguayan officials vehemently deny ambitions
to establish a U.S. military base at Mariscal Estigarribia, the
ICC immunity agreement and U.S. counterterrorism training
exercises have increased suspicions that the U.S. is building a
stronghold in a region that is strategic to resource and
military interests.

The Mariscal Estigarribia air base is within 124 miles of
Bolivia and Argentina, and 200 miles from Brazil, near the
Triple Frontier where Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina meet.
Boliviaâs natural gas reserves are the second largest in South
America, while the Triple Frontier region is home to the Guarani
Aquifer, one of the worldâs largest fresh water sources. (See
Story #20.)

Not surprisingly, U.S. rhetoric is building about terrorist
threats in the triborder region. Dangl reports claims by Defense
officials that Hezbollah and Hamas, radical Islamic groups from
the Middle East, receive significant funding from the Triple
Frontier, and that growing unrest in this region could leave a
political âblack holeâ that would erode other democratic
efforts. Dangl notes that in spite of frequent attempts to link
terror networks to the triborder area, there is little evidence
of a connection.

The baseâs proximity to Bolivia may cause even more concern.
Bolivia has a long history of popular protest against U.S.
exploitation of its vast natural gas reserves. But the resulting
election of leftist President Evo Morales, who on May 1, 2006
signed a decree nationalizing all of Boliviaâs gas reserves, has
certainly intensified hostilities with the U.S.1
When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited Paraguay in
August of 2005, he told reporters that, âthere certainly is
evidence that both Cuba and Venezuela have been involved in the
situation in Bolivia in unhelpful ways.â
Military analysts from Uruguay and Bolivia maintain that the
threat of terrorism is often used by the U.S. as an excuse for
military intervention and the monopolization of natural
resources.

A journalist writing for the Argentinian newspaper, Clarin,
visited the base at Mariscal Estigarribia and reported it to be
in perfect condition. Capable of handling large military planes,
it is oversized for the Paraguayan air force, which only has a
handful of small aircraft. The base is capable of housing 16,000
troops, has an enormous radar system, huge hangars, and an air
traffic control tower. The airstrip itself is larger than the
one at the international airport in Asuncion, Paraguayâs
capital. Near the base is a military camp that has recently
grown in size.

Hallinan notes that Paraguayâs neighbors are very skeptical
of the situation, as there is a disturbing resemblance between
U.S. denials about Mariscal Estigarribia and the disclaimers
made by the Pentagon about Eloy Alfaro airbase in Manta,
Ecuador. The U.S. claimed the Manta base was a âdirt stripâ used
for weather surveillance. When local journalists revealed its
size, however, the U.S. admitted the base harbored thousands of
mercenaries and hundreds of U.S. troops, and Washington had
signed a ten-year basing agreement with Ecuador. (See Chapter 2,
Story #17, for similarities between the Manta air base in
Ecuador, and the current situation unfolding in Paraguay.)

As Paraguay breaks ranks with her neighbors by allowing the
U.S. to carry out military operations in the heart of South
America, Logan and Flynn report that nongovernmental
organizations in Paraguay are protesting the new U.S. military
presence in their country, warning that recent moves could be
laying the foundation for increasing U.S. presence and influence
over the entire region. Perhaps the strongest words come from
the director of the Paraguayan human rights organization Peace
and Justice Service, Orlando Castillo, who claims that the U.S.
aspires to turn Paraguay into a âsecond Panama for its troops,
and it is not far from achieving its objective to control the
Southern Cone and extend the Colombian War.â

UPDATE BY BENJAMIN DANGL
The election of Evo Morales in Bolivia in December of 2005
brought more attention to the U.S. military presence in
neighboring Paraguay. Since his election, Morales has
nationalized the countryâs gas reserves and strengthened ties
with Cuba and Venezuela to build a more sustainable economy.
Such policies have not been warmly received in Washington.
Responding to this progressive trend, on May 22, 2006 George
Bush said he was âconcerned about the erosion of democracyâ in
Venezuela and Bolivia.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, himself a victim of a
U.S.-backed coup, said Bushâs comments mean, âHeâs already given
the green light to start conspiring against the democratic
government of Bolivia.â U.S. troops stationed in Paraguay may be
poised for such an intervention. However, human rights reports
suggest the U.S. military presence has already resulted in
bloodshed.

Paraguay is the fourth largest producer of soy in the world.
As this industry expands, poor farmers are being forced off
their lands. These farmers have organized protests, road
blockades and land occupations against this displacement and
have faced subsequent repression from military, police, and
paramilitary forces.

Investigations by Servicio Paz y Justicia (Serpaj), a human
rights group in Paraguay, report that the worst cases of
repression against farmers took place in areas with the highest
concentration of U.S. troops. This violence resulted in the
deaths of forty-one farmers in three separate areas.

âThe U.S. military is advising the Paraguayan police and
military about how to deal with these farmer groups,â Orlando
Castillo of Serpaj told me over the phone. He explained that
U.S. troops monitor farmers to find information about union
organizations and leaders, then tell Paraguayan officials how to
proceed. âThe numbers from our study show what this U.S.
presence is doing,â Castillo said.

The U.S. government maintains the military exercises in
Paraguay are humanitarian efforts. However, the deputy speaker
of the Paraguayan parliament, Alejandro Velazquez Ugarte, said
that of the thirteen exercises going on in the country, only two
are of a civilian nature.

This presence is an example of the U.S. governmentâs
âcounter-insurgencyâ effort in Latin America. Such meddling has
a long, bloody history in the region. Currently, the
justification is the threat of terrorism instead of communism.
As Latin America shifts further away from Washingtonâs
interests, such militarization is only likely to increase.

Throughout these recent military operations, the U.S.
corporate media, as well as Paraguayan media, have ignored the
story. Soccer, not dead farmers or plans for a coup, has been
the focus of most headlines.

For ongoing reports on the U.S. militarization of Paraguay
and elsewhere visit www.UpsideDownWorld.org, a website on activism and politics
in Latin America, and www.TowardFreedom.com. Benjamin Danglâs book, The Price of
Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (forthcoming
from AK Press, January 2007), includes further investigations
into the U.S. military operations in Paraguay.
Ideas for action include organizing protests and writing letters
to the U.S. embassy in Paraguay (www.asuncion.usembassy.gov).
For more information on international solidarity, email Orlando
Castillo at Serpaj in Paraguay: desmilitarizacion@serpajpy.org.py

UPDATE BY CONN HALLINAN
My article was written in late November 2005 during the run-up
to the Bolivian elections. That campaign featured indigenous
leader Evo Morales, a fierce critic of Washingtonâs neoliberal,
free trade policies that have impoverished tens of millions
throughout Latin America. The Bush administration not only
openly opposed Morales, it charged there was a growing
âterrorismâ problem in the region and began building up military
forces in nearby Paraguay.

There have been a number of important developments since last
fall. Morales won the election and nationalized Boliviaâs
petrochemical industry. In the past, such an action might have
triggered a U.S.-sponsored coup, or at least a crippling
economic embargo. Foreign oil and gas companies immediately
tried to drive a wedge between Bolivia and other nations in the
region by threatening to halt investments or pull out entirely.
This included companies partially owned by Brazil and Argentina.

But Latin America is a very different place these days. Three
days after the May 1, 2005 nationalization, Argentine President
Nestor Kirchner, Brazilian President Lula De Silva, Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez, and Morales met in Puerto Iguazu and
worked out an agreement to help Bolivia develop its resources
while preserving regional harmony. As a result, it is now likely
that foreign petrochemical companies will remain in Bolivia,
although they will pay up to four times as much as they did
under the old agreements. And if they leave, the Chinese and
Russians are waiting in the wings.

The situation is still delicate. U.S. Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld recently compared Chavez to Adolph Hitler and
linked him to Cubaâs Fidel Castro and Morales. Aid is flowing to
militaries in Colombia and Paraguay, and the White House
continues to use private proxies to intervene in the Colombian
civil war. While there is a growing solidarity among nations in
the southern cone, some of their economies are delicate.

Ecuador is presently wracked by demonstrations demanding the
expulsion of foreign oil companies and an end to free trade
talks with the U.S. This is an ongoing story. While the
alternative media continues to cover these developments, the
mainstream media has largely ignored them.

A note on reading the mainstream: the Financial Times
recently highlighted a Latinobarometro poll indicating that most
countries in South America were rejecting âdemocracyâ as a form
of government. But since free markets and neoliberalism were
sold as âdemocracyââeconomic policies that most South Americans
have overwhelmingly rejectedâdid the poll measure an embrace of
authoritarianism or a rejection of failed economic policies?
Tread carefully.